Death at the Old Hotel

by Con Lehane

  “Barney’s okay,” he said, “but this one’s for you and me.” He nodded as he said this, compressing his lips and looking me in the eye—a quick hard look. Sam was like that. His confidence left me feeling it wouldn’t do much good to argue. For myself, I would have discussed this with Barney and a half-dozen other people before making a decision. So it struck me, as it often does, that I tend to be buffeted about in life by folks who are more confident about what they choose to do than I am about what I’ve chosen to do.

  We met Eliot at his office on the second floor of a loft building in the garment district. It was still early enough in the morning to have to dodge the dress trolleys as we walked from where the cab dropped us on Seventh Avenue. The garment district was one of the places in Manhattan I really liked because folks actually worked for a living there—making things, moving stuff around. Over the years I’d known it, the area had both changed and not changed. Young Latin guys still pushed or pulled the racks of dresses or coats or jackets through the streets, and there were probably still hundreds of small textile wholesalers in the staunchly working-class, broad-fronted loft buildings. But some of the buildings and streets had the ominous look of conversion about them—Latin guys in hard hats instead of Latin guys pushing hand trucks. You could see that in a few years another piece of the real New York would be turned into outlandishly priced condominiums and trendy restaurants overseen by chefs who put their names on the menu. Still, the changing face of New York, however much it saddened me, was not my concern this morning.

  The office we entered had a door with a frosted glass window that looked like the one with SPADE AND ARCHER printed on it. The office had the same large wooden desk and metal file cabinet you might expect behind such a door and the same dusty wood floor. There was an inner office also. But that door was closed. Eliot sat at the desk in the outer office, looking out of place and uncomfortable. I suspected this was because the office served as a larger than normal post office box and not much else. In addition to trying on the desk for size, Eliot seemed to be trying on the aspect of a reasonable man as well. He didn’t look any more comfortable in that role than he did behind the desk.

  “You guys are making a mistake,” he said, then waited for this to sink in. “I don’t gotta do this. I don’t gotta put up with your shit. But I’m a good guy.” He snuck a look at each of us, I assumed because he expected an argument about his good-guy assertion. Sam and I waited to see what would come next.

  What came next was an envelope from Eliot’s inside suit jacket pocket. When he reached for it, I panicked, thinking he went for a gun, but the hand went in and the envelope came out so fast, I hadn’t time to react anyway.

  “What’s in there’s for you. I’m putting youse on the payroll with the union to get the strike over.” He brushed his lapels with his hand to flatten the front of the suit jacket. It was brown, and he wore a blue shirt and a darker blue tie. Everything looked crisply ironed, and his silver hair was slicked back. “Settle it any way you want.” It seemed like he was hiding behind his thick eyebrows as he spoke. “Only thing is, you gotta settle it quick, and the broad don’t go back.”

  This was cool, I said to myself. I’d never been offered a bribe before; probably I’d never done anything worth bribing me to do or not do. I was curious as to how much was in the envelope, but it wasn’t likely I’d find out.

  I stood up. Sam stayed sitting, so this gave me pause, but I went ahead anyway. “Nice of you to offer, Mr. Eliot. But no thanks.”

  Sam didn’t say anything. I looked at him. He looked at me. I gestured with my eyes toward the envelope. He didn’t take his eyes from mine. His expression was frank, not evasive, nothing to hide.

  Eliot seemed troubled by my answer. The idea of someone refusing a bribe must have been outside his frame of reference. He mumbled a sort of gangsterland pep talk, a soliloquy that contained a lot of youse guys on the one side and dem assholes on the udder side, ending up something like wese guys had heart and knew how things were and would do the right thing, while dem guys—the assholes—would be persuaded by the force of our argument, the emphasis being on force.

  I was about to tell Eliot he could stick his envelope up his ass, when Sam said, “Excuse me, Mr. Eliot, what Brian’s sayin’ here is we don’t want to take your money until we show you we got the goods. You understand what I’m sayin’? You keep that envelope, Mr. Eliot. But keep it where you can get your hands on it, because when me and McNulty finish up, you’ll be needin’ that envelope again.”

  Eliot nodded. “Youse guys know how it is.”

  One of us guys for sure didn’t know how it was. I didn’t know what the hell Sam was doing, but he didn’t seem to care. I wouldn’t say he was whistling as we walked along Seventh Avenue to the subway, but it sure seemed like he was. The only thing he did say, just as we entered the subway, was that we probably didn’t need to mention the meeting to anyone.

  I didn’t want the money. I wanted the strike. This was a fine kettle of fish. Sam was no better than Eliot, selling out the workers for a few bucks, even for a few thousand bucks. This was what happened when you had secret meetings. I sat on the subway getting more and more pissed off, until we got off at 50th Street.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Sam said as we walked toward the hotel. “You wanna go duke it out with Eliot again? When you gonna learn, man? You stand up there all noble and tell Eliot you too good for his money. See where you wind up.” I was staring at him, probably with my mouth open. “What we got now is some time if you can keep your mouth shut.” He looked me over and his expression clouded up. “What you gawkin’ at, McNulty? You never seen me before?”

  This was a New York thing. I knew too many people like Sam. You’re supposed to know. If you don’t know, too bad for you. You’re going to have to guess because no one explains anything to you. It would seem simple enough to ask Sam whether he was willing to take Eliot’s money, but he figured I should already know. I didn’t though. First I thought he was. Now it sounded like he wasn’t.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Sam eyed me suspiciously. “You ever think about movin’ to the country, McNulty? A small town somewhere maybe? You ain’t cut out for city life. Things move fast here, man. You gotta be quick on your feet.”

  He waited a few seconds for me to put together a response. It was in vain. I couldn’t think of one. Maybe he was right. A small town, a slower pace …

  We found Barney in the Greek diner across from the hotel. The shop was union, and the Greek guys were friends with Barney and a lot of the hotel workers, so they’d set up an office of sorts for us in a small function room at the back of the restaurant. It gave us a base—a place to go inside and warm up, and even more important, a bathroom. The owners of the diner were tough guys, too, who themselves worked sixteen-hour days and had a weak spot for the toiling masses, who were by and large their customers.

  I didn’t feel right not telling Barney about the meeting with Eliot, but on instinct, I chose to throw my lot in with Sam for the time being. I hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

  Barney told us what had been going on at the picket line. A couple of housekeepers had gone back in, but the Russians were holding on. The day dining room crew was restless and planning a meeting with Equity to see if they really had to stay on strike. Everyone else was strong. The picketers had turned the provisions and laundry trucks and, most important, the trash haulers, around. Most of the cabdrivers were avoiding the hotel, too. I didn’t know how long any of this would last once word got out that the union wasn’t going to sanction the strike. We needed something to happen pretty quick.

  That evening, Betsy, Mary Donohue, and the night crew again had things under control on the picket line, so I went uptown for some rest and peace and quiet. Barney lived even farther uptown, in an Irish neighborhood in the North Bronx. I’d gone up there a few times with him to the Irish bars in days gone by, and he invited me up this evening, but it’s a long trek on
the train and an even longer trek back home when you’re tired and half drunk, with the alternative, sleeping on a lumpy couch and taking the subway back in the morning grubby and hungover, even less appealing, so with that to consider, on top of my having to keep secret my talk with Eliot, I said no and went home.

  When you live alone, sometimes the walls start closing in. The excitement of the day crashes around your feet and you’re left with a lot of emptiness. Sometimes, you don’t notice. You’ve come from somewhere and you’re thinking about that, or you’ll be going somewhere later and your mind is on that. Other times, like this night, you’re too aware of the nothingness around you. Other people have lives they go home to—kids and wives, fathers and mothers, friends and lovers—but this night I was having a hard time with the end of the day. I should go and see Pop; I hadn’t been out to Brooklyn for a while, but I didn’t feel like making the trip to Flatbush either.

  Thinking of Pop, I thought of Kevin. I had to deal with him. I would see him this weekend for his regular visit. He’d been skipping the visits once in a while lately, so I should have figured he was up to no good. I got careless and let my guard down. Kevin’s a great kid, but the teen years are tough. Like most kids his age, he needs a leash, and I hadn’t been doing that. I don’t like saying no to him. I don’t like throwing my weight around. But this weekend would be a showdown.

  As soon as I started thinking about Kevin, my mood changed. The empty places began to fill up. I remembered I was a guy with something important to do in life. I had a kid to take care of. When I got into my apartment, I caught a whiff from the used litter box and remembered I had a cat to keep up with, too. I hadn’t seen him, but knew he must still be there. The food bowl was empty again, and he certainly found his way to the litter box. It was amazing how much shit one little cat could produce. I didn’t much care that he hid. My job was to keep him until the weather warmed up, and it was already warm enough for him to find an alley to set up digs. I’d left the kitchen window open, so he could slip through the bars and out into the alley if he decided to leave early, but he hadn’t taken the hint.

  After rummaging through the refrigerator and finding a TV dinner in the freezer, I considered heading out to one of the neighborhood bars for a couple of pops, but decided against it. Too often, a couple of pops led to another couple, and the later it got, the more interesting things got, or so I might have thought. I seldom drank at home alone, either, and I didn’t have any pot. So I found myself in a dreadful state of normalcy for the evening.

  I read for a while and fell asleep earlier than I usually do. Somewhere in the night, I felt something moving on the bed, then a soft pressure against my thigh. I didn’t wake fully, just reached out and felt something furry. This startled me awake enough to realize it was the cat. I thought about giving him the boot but realized he’d come up for warmth after the boilers shut down in the wee hours of the morning, so I left him alone.

  Since I’d gone to sleep so early, I got to the picket line early the next morning again, leaving the cat in the kitchen, giving him some food in his bowl, and showing him the open window. The line looked more professional that morning, with printed picket signs someone had arranged for, and the blue police barricades. Pop was there when I arrived. This didn’t surprise me. Strike support was one of the Communist corporal works of mercy. He was walking beside Barney preaching class solidarity when I caught up with them. Barney was beating his drum again, too, telling Pop about the whoore MacAlister and how something must be done about him.

  “It’s him holding up the works,” said Barney. “He’s a hard man and he won’t give in.”

  “You can’t let this get personal,” said Pop. “The workers want their money. They don’t care about grudges.”

  Barney nodded. We were all three of us thinking about this as we walked slowly in a circle.

  “You’ll need to get this settled before Christmas,” said Pop. “You won’t hold them once they see the holidays. You can’t explain a strike to kids waiting for presents.”

  Barney and I nodded about this also. We had less than two weeks. If MacAlister didn’t throw in the towel by then, most of the workers would start drifting back into work, if not stampeding. It was cold, even though we were walking, so after another half hour, I sent Pop home, asking him to round up Kevin and hold on to him until I called him. I was reluctant to tell Pop about Kevin’s latest escapade, more for my own sake than Kevin’s. I still couldn’t handle Pop’s disapproval.

  After he left, Barney and I picketed for a few more minutes in silence. When I said I was going to the Greeks’ for a cup of coffee, Barney cleared his throat a couple of times, scuffling around, looking at his feet.

  “There’s a bit of a problem came up last night.” His tone suggested it was more than a bit of a problem.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s Betsy. Her husband came by the picket line and told her to go into work.” Barney faced me squarely. His blue eyes weren’t twinkling. “She said he’ll be stopping by today to have a word with me.”

  chapter eight

  We stayed on the picket line all day into the evening, dealing with small problems that came up: a couple of tense moments with a belligerent guest and the hotel security guards. Then a wiseguy Russian cabdriver, who most likely saw the strike as the return of the Bolsheviks, harangued us for a good few minutes, but his accent was so thick no one understood what he saying. We also had some work to do with our own members: some housekeepers with cold feet and a desk clerk we figured out was a stooge for MacAlister. The real problem was yet to come, in the form of Betsy’s husband.

  Late in the afternoon, the buildings around us swallowed up the little bit of warmth the sun provided, so a deeper chill descended with the darkness. The street was mostly deserted by then, except when the light changed at Ninth Avenue and a scraggly herd of taxis, cars, and trucks galloped through to the east and the next traffic light at Eighth Avenue. We stomped our feet and burrowed into our coats, waiting for the looming confrontation.

  One of the bad habits bartenders develop is thinking we have to be the peacemaker if we see a fight brewing. We see it as part of our job to head off this sort of trouble, mostly to keep the combatants from breaking up the joint. With me it’s worse, another legacy of Pop’s “no man is an island” brainwashing. So I was already thinking that if Betsy’s husband showed up, it was going to be up to me to turn him around.

  This waiting for a battle I hoped wouldn’t come reminded me of myself as a kid in Brooklyn, waiting one night on the corner, a gang of us—five or six, maybe seven or eight—waiting for the Puerto Rican kids from Sunset Park, who said they’d be coming for us, after our baseball game that afternoon broke up in a fight at home plate between Pat O’Hagan and the other team’s catcher. I didn’t know what the other kids felt that night—like I didn’t know what Barney felt this night, though he seemed calm enough. Maybe some of them looked forward to the fight, but I dreaded it, hoped and prayed they wouldn’t come. That night, the Puerto Ricans didn’t come. Probably a grown-up, one of their dads maybe, clocked what was going on and headed them off. This night, though, Barney and I were the grown-ups, and there wouldn’t be anyone to head it off.

  The night crew was sparser than it had been earlier in the week. There were a couple of waitresses, a handful of kitchen workers, and one of the night desk clerks, who pestered me with questions as to whether the strike was legal, and would the hotel hire strikebreakers and replace us all, and when did I think the strike would be over.

  Like most people, I don’t like trouble. Unfortunately, there are people who look for it—far too many for my money—and one of them was heading our way tonight. I didn’t even remember the jerk’s name. So I’m going to say, Look, Betsy’s husband, you seem like a reasonable guy—a lie to begin with—and then you don’t want any trouble here—another lie because to create trouble is precisely why he was coming here.

  Half a block away I saw him, walking with the u
nmistakable gait of a drunk holding himself stiffly in line, pretending he isn’t staggering. He was well built and muscular, and his leather bomber’s jacket didn’t hide that his body was hard. As cold as it was, he didn’t wear a hat, and his hair was longer than you’d expect for a cop. He walked right up to us, his eyes lively with drink, something between a smile and a sneer on his lips.

  “You the guy telling my wife not to go to work?” he asked, his face inches from Barney’s.

  “Good evening,” said Barney, his eyes just as lively and his stance as challenging.

  I was standing there with squirrels running around my insides and these guys looked like they were having the time of their lives. “Watch his hand,” I said to Betsy’s husband. “It’s hurt.”

  He saw Barney’s bandages and seemed confused for a moment, as if dimly remembering a prohibition of some sort about slugging a cripple, but this didn’t hold him back for long. He tapped Barney in the chest with his forefinger. “Maybe someone didn’t tell you Betsy’s married.” His words rang with menace. “Maybe you don’t know she’s married with a baby at home. Maybe you think you got some business taking advantage of a girl that don’t know much and ain’t been around. You the big union guy so fucking tough. I’ll show you how fucking tough you are. Your hand wasn’t bandaged I’d smack you down right now—”

  I stepped in then. He was working his way up to a rage, and he might just smack Barney anyway. I didn’t want that to happen and Barney try to smack back and leave a couple of his fingers in the gutter. Usually, if you get a guy’s eyes off the person he’s going after and onto yours, you can short-circuit the frenzy long enough to get a few words in. This didn’t happen. That I’d stepped up didn’t register on the guy.