by Alan Russell
On his desk were only two incident-related reports, one of which was written on cocktail napkins numbered one through six. The thespians must have decided it was their turn to make a nuisance of themselves. They had closed down the Breakers Lounge the night before, and the bartender had reviewed their show. Between drinks, the actors had taken turns doing scenes from their favorite plays: Shakespeare in the rounds.
Some of their performances had been inspired by the Bob Johnsons. The appearance of Bob Johnsons (identified by their name tags) had prompted denunciatory scenes (Tennessee Williams was evidently a popular selection, as was Eugene O’Neill), and several times during the course of the evening the hennaed playwright had, with pointed finger, announced her plight: “It was supposed to be a six-act play, one for every meal, and red herrings for snacks, but, alas, the Philistines would not have it.” The bartender/critic didn’t think their vituperation as commanding as other performances. The thespians’ final curtain call came at two A.M., with closing scenes from Our Town, and apparently there wasn’t a dry eye in the lounge.
The other report was left by one of the Brown’s Guards. Included was a printout picture of a Hotel reader board that had been tampered with. Apparently someone had neglected to lock up the display, and the Jackson-Ropenhauser Dinner Party in the Whaling Room had been changed into Jack the Ripper Was Here. Am was sure the alteration was only a prank, but given the circumstances it didn’t strike him as funny. Any signboard is a magnet for attempted hijinks. Given the opportunity, people like to play Scrabble with the letters. At most hotels, electronic reader boards have taken away that creativity. Entries on an electronic board are typed on a terminal, which eliminates the laborious process of hand-posting the letters, but the Hotel California still eschewed such gadgetry, preferring its wooden letters and large oaken reader boards. Am wondered when tradition would yield to labor costs.
The reader boards were scrutinized by more than group and banquet participants trying to find out where their function was being held. The Hotel was visited daily by sales representatives of other hotels, callers the industry refers to as reader board readers. The readers were there for the sole purpose of writing down which groups the Hotel was hosting. They compiled their lists with the hope that in the future they could lure those same conventions to their properties. One GM Am worked under had vehemently hated reader board readers. He was all too aware of the half dozen or so “vultures” who visited the property daily, and the sight of their “carrion feeding” always incensed him. The happiest Am had ever seen his boss was the day of the bogus reader board entries. On display were the purported gatherings of a Pornography Making Workshop, a Jim Jones Kool-Aid Tasting, a Symposium on Endangered Faeces, and a Reunion of the Manson Family. What delighted the GM most was how the reader board readers blithely wrote down the entries in front of them, never questioning what was there.
Was Am doing the same thing? Was there something about the murders he was taking at face value? Getting the chance for deep thought in any workplace is a rare event. There was something in the back of Am’s mind that wanted to come out, but the thought was driven away by the rapping at his office door. Whoever was doing the knocking had taken loud lessons from a bull elephant.
Shouting, of necessity: “Come in.”
Jimmy Mazzelli opened the door. “Problem, Am,” he said.
Problem. Why was that a word that usually prefaced his nickname? Jimmy helped himself to an empty chair, his slouch instantaneous.
“What’s the problem, Jimmy?”
“Gent’s losing his cool at the front desk. Last night one of my boys apparently delivered his laundry to the wrong room. Man didn’t notice until this morning. We’re tracking it down now.”
Jimmy liked to refer to himself as the bell captain and the other bellmen as “his boys,” but his was a self-appointed title.
“Man’s name?”
“Hazleton.”
“Room?”
“Three thirty-eight.”
“How much laundry?”
Jimmy handed over two pink laundry slips, and Am whistled. The last time he had seen a similar laundry bill was when the duke and duchess had stayed at the Hotel.
“Who delivered it?”
“Wrong Way.”
“God. Find it, would you?”
“Like I told the gent, won’t be more than fifteen minutes before we get it to him. We already talked to Wrong Way on the phone, and he narrowed it down to half a dozen rooms or so.”
“How could he forget where he delivered that much laundry?” asked Am. “How is that humanly possible?”
Jimmy coughed behind his hand. Wrong Way wasn’t someone he ever bad-mouthed; he made Jimmy appear the epitome of competence.
“Why don’t you send Mr. Hazleton back to me?”
“Righto, Am.”
As usual, Jimmy had left out a telling part of the story. When Mr. Hazleton walked into the room, Am expected a man dressed to the nines, but Hazleton looked more like he was auditioning as a flasher. He was wearing a raincoat and shoes and apparently nothing else. Am remembered to extend more than his jaw, but Hazleton favored a harangue to his handshake.
“I’d like to know what kind of hotel you’re running here?” he asked.
It was a good question, one Am often asked himself. “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Hazleton,” he said. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”
The offer calmed the guest slightly. “Nothing,” he said. “I just want my laundry.”
“Lots of laundry,” said Am.
“Yes,” he said, “lots of laundry. And the last time I stayed at this hotel the same damn thing happened. This is the second time my laundry has turned up missing in action.”
There is a multiplying factor to pent-up rage. It explained why Hazleton was out to shoot bear in nothing but his raincoat. Am let him have his say.
“Why is it,” he continued, “that your property can’t manage a simple thing like delivering the damn laundry to the right room?”
The situation called for sympathetic noises, which Am offered. Hotel managers are good at soothing sounds. Anyone who works in hotels doesn’t need to use a thesaurus for the word sorry. They live the listings. Mr. Hazleton continued to bemoan his missing laundry, and Am continued to make sounds. For want of anything else to do, Am also shuffled exhibits A and B, the pink laundry slips. Belatedly he gave them a closer glance and decided they were friendly to the defense. He passed them over to Hazleton.
“I’m just guessing,” he said, “but the bellman might have misinterpreted your writing. I happen to know you’re in room 338, but from these slips I can see how the items might have been taken to room 328. Or 358. Or 339. Or 388. Or even 329.”
At the Hotel, guests fill out their own laundry slips, and Hazleton’s writing should have gotten him into medical school. Hazleton examined his own writing and was faced with the numeric indictment. “Hmmmm,” he said.
“I’m sure we’ll have the laundry to your room in a matter of minutes,” Am said. “In the future, though, we’ll take pains to make sure this never happens again.”
Hazleton nodded, a much more timid man than the one who had entered Am’s office. He stood up, paused to give an embarrassed little wave, and then started for the door. As he passed by, Am couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t wearing any socks with his black shoes. Stockings had been part of his missing laundry consignment.
“Mr. Hazleton?”
He turned.
“Why so much cleaning?”
Am violated his own rule by voicing his curiosity. It’s okay to be nosy if you work in a hotel, as long as you’re silent about it. Twelve suits, fourteen ties, three sports jackets, and five pairs of pants had been sent out for dry cleaning and the laundry ticket included bags of dress shirts, underwear, and socks.
Hazleton’s expression both pleaded the Fifth and told Am to go to hell, but a bending of the Constitution prevailed. “I don’t like to travel,” he said. �
�The company knows it. So I save my laundry and dry cleaning and wait for them to send me out. There are per diems on most things, but not laundry. I make them pay.”
He shuffled out, black shoes and no socks, Willy Loman gone anarchic. Jimmy Mazzelli met him just outside the door. “Found your laundry, sir,” he said. “Delivered all safe and sound to your room now. We’ll make sure it don’t happen again, you can be sure of that.”
“Jimmy,” Am called, stopping the bellman before his Boy Scout act got on track. Canadian Mounties can learn a thing or two from bellmen. They not only get their man, they usually get a tip at the same time. An experienced bellman in search of a gratuity is about as easy to shake as a pit bull with a good hold.
Jimmy reluctantly left his game. Maybe he realized a man wearing only a raincoat wasn’t likely to be carrying a wallet, or maybe there was something in the tone of Am’s voice that activated his self-preservation instinct.
“Yes, Am?”
“Bring me the delivery logs.”
Hotels are great believers in signing everything in and out. The rationale behind the paperwork is sound. Whenever a hotel accepts anything through its employees, a bailment relationship is established, which means if a hotel employee agrees to hang up a sable coat on a hanger in the back for a few minutes, and that coat disappears, the hotel is liable for the loss. Be it mail, deliveries, messages, faxes, or laundry, all items at the Hotel were supposed to be accounted for, both coming and going.
With Jimmy watching over his shoulder, Am opened the log book to the laundry and dry cleaning entries. Mr. Hazleton’s clothing had been signed in and out. The correct room number had been entered, and Wrong Way had initialed delivery to room 338. The bellman’s mistake was that he had trusted to the scrawl of a laundry slip rather than checking off the tag with the room number entered into the log. Incompetence can always beat any system.
More for Jimmy’s sake than his own, Am flipped through several pages of the log book, an obligatory reviewing of the troops that was supposed to be a reminder of management’s watchfulness. A few initials hadn’t been entered, enough for Am to be able to grouse. Not that such shortcomings were ever noticed until a package turned up missing. Or until laundry was taken to the wrong room.
Because room 605 had so occupied Am’s mind, he noticed what would have otherwise been an innocuous entry on one of the delivery sheets. Two days ago there had been a delivery to the murder room, a bottle of Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon and a wheel of cheese. The delivery had been accepted at 4:40 P.M., and the receiving clerk’s initials were T.K. The log showed the intended recipient was David Stern. The signature of whoever had dropped the wine and cheese at the desk looked indecipherable, but T.K. had noted “Card attached.” The final notation showed that delivery had taken place at 4:45 P.M. by A.S.
Am tapped at the initials, brought Jimmy’s eyes to them. “Who’s A.S.?”
Jimmy didn’t even have to think: “Albert Slocum. He in trouble?”
Am didn’t answer. McHugh had put the time of deaths at late afternoon or early evening, which would have been about when the wine and cheese were taken up to the room. The delivery bothered Am. The murdered lawyer had wanted his anonymity protected. Who had known he was there to send the wine and cheese?
He’d have to talk with T.K. and with Albert. He wondered what they had seen and what they remembered.
And he wondered if the couple had clinked wineglasses together and made a final toast before being murdered.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“McHugh.”
“I have a request,” said Am. “Would you please fax me a list of everything that was inventoried in room six oh five?”
Just getting through to McHugh had been difficult. Am had been transferred and put on hold half a dozen times, had been forced to plead his case to one skeptical voice after another. Now he finally had an audience with the greatest skeptic of them all.
“Why?” asked McHugh, sounding even less ready than usual to suffer fools.
“A bottle of wine and some cheese were delivered up to that room just before five on the day the murders took place. There was a card with the delivery. I’m curious as to who did the sending.”
“You’re curious about a lot of things.” McHugh didn’t say anything else for half a minute, but Am heard him rustling papers. Finally: “We didn’t find any bottle, or cheese, or note in the room.”
“Has an alcohol blood level been done on the victims?”
“Jesus. I suppose this couple opened their honor bar and out popped a dwarf hooker whose MO was putting Mickey Finns in the airline bottles.”
Am made a dignified attempt at blackmail. “Was it my imagination, or did I hear on the news that the police were interested in receiving any and all information that might be useful to them in the Hotel double-murder case?”
“I’ll put it on the list,” said McHugh.
He didn’t have to say it; Am knew about where it would be positioned on the list. As if defending himself against that unspoken charge, the detective said, “They probably ate the cheese, and drank the vino, then stuck the empty bottle outside the door for one of your monkey suits to pick up.”
“Probably.”
Still, even McHugh couldn’t ignore the matter entirely. “Who delivered the stuff to the room?”
“The wine and cheese were dropped off at the front desk and a bellman took them up. I have a call in to both the clerk who accepted the delivery and the bellman who took them up.”
McHugh asked for their names and telephone numbers and when they were next scheduled to work. Before supplying the information, Am exacted a price. “I’d still appreciate that inventory. It might help if I knew what was in the room and what wasn’t.”
“Why, sure,” said the detective, his tone unusually conciliatory. “What’s your number? I’ll fax it right over to you.”
Surprised, Am gave him the number and his thanks. As promised, the fax arrived soon after their conversation. There was a long list of inventoried items, but only one entry was circled: condoms. That explained the detective’s alacrity. Next to it, McHugh had written: “Do you think there’s a connection?”
Out loud, Am announced, “Asshole.” To himself he made a vow: I’m going to show that man.
His imprecation hadn’t gone unheard. Barbara Terry had walked in on it and now stood in the middle of his office, looking uncertain as to whether she should proceed. “Is this a bad time, Am?”
“Is there ever a good time, Barb?”
She chuckled. Barb had been a housekeeper for more than forty years, had cleaned about everything and seen about everything, and yet she still didn’t despair. There are people who reaffirm your faith in humanity. Barb was one of those. One of Hercules’ twelve labors was the cleaning of the Augean stables in a single day, a matter of clearing out thirty years of deposits left by three thousand oxen. To Am’s thinking, Barb had to perform a similar feat every day. White-haired and round, she didn’t look like Hercules, but she wasn’t one to shrink from combat, either—if the cause was just. Over the years Am had learned to read her eyes; usually they were a laughing blue, but when joined to battle, there was a fierceness to them. They now carried that look.
“I’m told Mr. Harmon will be checking in today, Am.”
The name didn’t mean anything to him. “Mr. Harmon . . . ?”
“I’m sure Chief Horton must have mentioned him to you. The Chief was on the case this last year. He said that Mr. Harmon made him, that is, gave him gas like a . . . Well, never mind. Suffice to say, Mr. Harmon put a bee in both of our bonnets.”
“What’s Harmon’s crime?”
“He’s an adulterator.”
Barb liked her food and her words plain. She was direct, if not always grammatical. Am figured her complaint was a few letters off.
“It’s been a long time,” he said, “since those days when there were signs in hotels saying that because it was improper to entertain guests of the
opposite sex in the bedrooms, the lobby should be used for that purpose. We’re not in the morality business, Barb.”
“Oh, that,” she said, waving her hand to signify the inconsequential. “I said adulterator. Not adulterer.”
“Adulterator? Of what?”
“Of our honor bars. It wasn’t easy to track him, Am. Oh, no. He liked to drink and then counterfeit all sorts of liquors. If he’d just done the Scotch, or bourbon, or vodka, we might have caught on to him easier. But he seems to have a taste for everything with a proof.”
Her outrage finally made sense to Am. One of the first tricks you learn as a child is to replace the gum wrapper in its package after the gum has been removed. You generously offer a stick of gum to any and all and laugh at the apparent chagrin of those duped. Usually the luster of such a prank wears off in adolescence. Usually.
The Hotel California supplies honor bars in all of its rooms. The term honor bar is certainly a misnomer. The guest is supposed to fill out a form for all items consumed, thus the “honor.” Not that any hotel accepts the word of its guests; there are attendants who monitor and restock the portable bars on a daily basis. Those same attendants are supposed to be checking the seals on the liquor to make sure they haven’t been tampered with, a task not altogether easy because of the diminutive bottles. For some guests, there is no honor in honor bars. They do worse than water down a drink; they substitute H20 for Absolut vodka, Johnnie Walker Scotch, and Tanqueray gin, or cola for Jack Daniel’s or Jim Beam. Most hotels now have sensors showing times and dates when the honor bar is opened. Some can even detect when any bottle is removed. The Hotel California had yet to upgrade their honor bars to one of the tamper-proof systems.
