The Case of the Guest Who Stayed Over (The M.O.D. Files Book 1)

by K. W. Callahan

  I smiled. “I take good care of the hotel, Tom. That’s my job.”

  He nodded, knowingly. “Well…thanks, you’re good to have around.”

  “No problem.” I stood up and headed for the door. “By the way, I wanted to do a little something special for the night staff on Halloween. That all right with you?”

  “Sure, Bobert. What were you thinking?”

  He was definitely in a better mood now. The food binge had stopped and the nicknames had resumed in full.

  “A behind the scenes tour. A trip through the back halls of the tragic Lanigan Hotel. Maybe a little historical embellishment along the way. Kind of like a ghost tour of sorts,” I shrugged. “Sound okay?”

  He smiled, nodding his head. “Do whatever you want. You know how to keep these folks entertained and their morale up. Have at it.”

  “Thanks, Tom,” I waved, as I closed him in his food-lined enclave.

  I took the elevator back upstairs to my room.

  It was time for a couple granola bars, a good nap, and then…football!

  ***

  As soon as I woke up from my brief cat-nap, I reached over for the phone and dialed the front desk.

  “Lanigan front desk, this is Lori speaking. How may I assist you?”

  “Hi Lori, this is Robert.”

  Lori had been with the hotel part-time now for several years as she finished up her business administration degree at a local community college.

  “Oh, hi Robert. How are you?”

  “Good thanks. Hey, can you give me the remaining arrival and departure numbers for today?”

  “Sure thing…just one second.”

  There was a pause.

  “Looks like we just have 37 checkouts left and about 98 arrivals.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure. Have a great day.”

  After all these years, I still found it funny to speak to front desk agents when they were performing their role and then again when they were on their own time. It was like they were actors playing a part when they were standing on the front desk “stage” in front of the general public. Once they stepped behind the curtain of the back office area for a break, the mask of civility often came off quickly. The façade of sweet, caring kindness would be torn down, often dramatically so, sometimes resulting in a torrent of profanity, punched walls, thrown objects and all sorts of other vileness.

  I can’t say I blamed them. Sometimes I felt the same way. As guest service agents, we often had to absorb so much frustration and ill-will from tired or upset guests that once we were out of the public eye, we were like balloons, ready to burst with bad energy, and we just couldn’t help but pop occasionally.

  My next call went to Kristen’s office phone. She didn’t really have an office per se, but as a supervisor, she did have a sort of cubby hole with a phone and computer.

  Her voicemail picked up.

  “Hey Kristen; it’s Robert,” I said. “It’s almost three o’ clock and it looks like we only have a handful of checkouts left and about a hundred arrivals. It should be pretty quiet tonight, so I’m going to take the evening off. Just call me if you run into anything. Bye.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I made it down to the Navigator Club just as the pre-game show was ending.

  Jay had found a booth adjacent to the largest television in the bar area and with a good line-of-sight no matter how many people crowded around us. The television was ringed with tiny toy buoys, ancient looking nautical charts, and a large fishing net that had ensnared some brightly colored plastic crabs and starfish. Oars, conchs, monstrous mounted fish with dastardly looking nose swords, and even a couple harpoons adorned the restaurant walls around us.

  The aging and well-worn wood plank floors, and servers outfitted in crisp, all-white sailing attire consisting of a captain’s hat, jacket, Bermuda shorts, knee-high socks, and polished shoes helped complete the Navigator Club’s nautical motif. It was like having 15 Captain Stubings all running around taking orders and serving food.

  The “Pirate Ship” was the club’s signature drink. Similar to a pina colada in taste, it wasn’t the drink itself that made it special, but rather the presentation. The libation was brought forth in a ceramic pirate ship – the size of a small dog – by two pirate-costumed waiters. The ship’s ceramic sails were doused in alcohol and lit on fire, which somehow made the cannons in the gunwales smoke and belch fire.

  The drink ran about $35 bucks, but could be enjoyed through extra long straws (after the fires were extinguished of course) by an entire table of patrons. It was one of those things that you did once just to say you’d done it.

  The Pirate Ship was a particular favorite among business travelers, VIPs, and travel writers – in other words, those who were having someone else foot the bill.

  I’d been treated to it once when I was interviewed for my job at the Lanigan; that was good enough for me.

  Jay saw me and waved as I entered the restaurant. I nodded and sauntered over. A pitcher of beer sat on the table, a soda in my spot.

  “Got a few appetizers on the way,” he said. “Too bad you have to work tonight.”

  “Guess what?” I grinned, motioning a server over. “I don’t.”

  “Sweet!” Jay grinned, evilly. “I hate drinking alone.”

  “A clean glass please,” I called to our server over the growing din of what was becoming an increasingly crowded restaurant.

  Jay took a big gulp of his beer and refreshed his glass from the half-full pitcher before him.

  “I need a night’s reprieve before the dork kings arrive,” he grumbled.

  The “dork kings” as Jay referred to them, comprised the MGC – or Midwest Gamer Convention – group checking in on Monday.

  The gamer convention was an annual event at the Lanigan, comprising only the truest and hardest core dragon slayers, wizards, warlocks, dungeon masters, giant killers, troll masters, and all sorts of other gaming characters, often arriving in complete – and as authentic as possible – costumes and gaming attire.

  “Those ‘dork kings’ as you refer to them, help pay our salaries you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just that this year they’ll be here on Halloween. It’s going to be madness. They’ll be strutting around in their outfits, having battles with their fake swords, zapping each other with strobe-effect wands, and all kinds of other ridiculousness. And you know how they are when they get all jacked-up on soda caffeine and sugar highs. It’s almost worse than the drunks!”

  Jay had an obvious dislike for the gamers. Maybe it was because Jay had been the jock type in high school and the gamers epitomized the kind of people that he loved to pick on back then. The gamers were the guys who all sat at that one table in the corner of the lunch room and kind of kept to themselves, discussing theoretical problems with the latest sci-fi shows rather than the hottest girls in their classes or who was dating the head cheerleader.

  Maybe their pants were a little too short. Maybe their glasses were a little too large. Or maybe they spent a little too much time playing their wizards and warriors games. Whatever the case, they looked about the same now as they did 10 or 20 years ago, and they acted about the same too. The difference was that many of them now worked as tech gurus or had made it in other high-paying, successful jobs, raking in bucket-loads of cash in the process. They drove fast cars, lived in huge mansions, and instead of girls shrugging them off like a cold chill as they did in high school, many of these guys had smokin’ hot girlfriends, beautiful wives…or both.

  It really bothered Jay, especially when they brought their hotties with them, all dolled up as sexy wizardresses, slinky elfins, or scantily clad slave girls captured from an enemy tribe during a dwarf raid or some other imaginary battle. These were the pretty cheerleaders, leggy volleyball players, and homecoming queens that Jay had dated in school, and who were now lost to what he considered, “dorks.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Jay.
Everyone has their own thing, and gaming is theirs. You don’t see them making fun of us for sitting here watching football, do you?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Oh yeah,” I raised an eyebrow. “How?”

  “Football means something. There’s a reason for it. There are playoffs and the Superbowl, and tons of people like it.”

  “That’s not really a good argument, Jay,” I said, sipping my beer.

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It’s just different.”

  “Different because you don’t dress up like a fool and do silly things?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Uh, I got news for you dude, look around you.”

  A middle-aged man sitting at the table next to us was dressed in an adult-sized brown bear costume, sporting a football jersey and a face painted to match the costume. His friend was wearing a beer-holding hat that people around him kept feeding with a pitcher of lager and from which he was greedily sucking down a steady stream of booze supplied by long straws that ran from the hat down to his mouth. At the table next to him, a bunch of Green Bay fans were wearing giant cheese hats, and the crowd at the bar – largely clad in Chicago team jerseys with their favorite players’ names emblazoned across their backs – was starting to get rowdy, chanting, “Bear dowwwwn, Chicago Bears,” and jostling each other back and forth, spilling beer all over one another in the process.

  “You’re right, Jay,” I smirked as the waitress brought my glass and I filled it with beer from our pitcher. I nodded for her to bring us another pitcher. “There’s a huge difference,” I said sarcastically. “These people aren’t doing anything embarrassing or foolish, are they?”

  “All right, shut up,” he frowned. “Game’s getting ready to start.”

  The game began with a quick Chicago fumble that was returned for a touchdown by the Packers. That quieted the crowd at the bar and roused the Cheeseheads next to us; but their excitement didn’t last long as the ensuing kickoff was returned for a Chicago touchdown, tying the game and resulting in more beer sloshing and chanting at the bar.

  By halftime, Jay and I were through our second pitcher, and we enjoyed a halftime show put on for us by the middle-aged bear who went dancing around the restaurant doing ridiculous tricks while people fed him beer. His friend with the beer hat was weaving his beer tubes so that he could drink through the holes in one of the neighboring table’s Cheesehead hats still perched atop its owner’s head.

  We were only minutes into the third quarter – with Chicago up by three – when I noticed a commotion toward the back of the bar. Several servers were gesticulating wildly, forming a sort of semi-circle around a patron who seemed to be looking for an escape but was finding his path blocked by both servers and a group of Green Bay fans who had suddenly erupted into celebration after a go-ahead touchdown.

  Half of me was mad that I’d missed the touchdown because of this distraction, the other half was curious as to what exactly was going on.

  I excused myself from Jay, who was pouting in his beer over the lost lead and who seemed intent on eating the last few chicken fingers before I did, and squeezed my way through the crowd over to where the servers had gathered.

  I arrived just as the restaurant manager, Antonio Alvarez, showed up with a security guard in tow.

  I knew Antonio saw me, but I left it to him to handle the situation. I never liked to interfere when on another manager’s turf (even though I could pull rank at any time if I felt it necessary) and I definitely didn’t like jumping in when that manager had subordinates around. Overstepping boundaries could not only make for ill-will between the manager and myself but diminish his authority in the eyes of his employees.

  Antonio inserted his slight frame along with the bulk of the security guard between the diner and the servers. He pointed several of them back to work; retaining the one server who I guessed had been serving the patron initially.

  The patron – a frail looking man – stood skulking in the corner. He was small, thin, pale, and I think he would have looked reasonably young had it not been for the several days’ worth of heavy stubble that covered his gaunt face. He glanced nervously back and forth between Antonio and the security guard.

  I didn’t recognize the guard. He must have been new to the Lanigan. He had the chiseled face of a Hollywood actor with the physic of a linebacker. It was a good choice by security to send him into this type of environment. Nobody was going to mess with this guy.

  Over the roar of the crowd I could barely make out what Antonio was saying, but I did catch him asking the server how much the bill was.

  I couldn’t hear the response, but his follow up was, “Where was he sitting?”

  The server pointed away toward the front of the bar, then mouthed a few more words I couldn’t make out.

  “How many times before?” I heard Antonio ask.

  This time I heard the server respond, “Once with me, and I think once with Ramirez a couple weeks ago.”

  Antonio nodded, said a few more words to the server – who promptly got back to work – then looked over at me and then at the security guard and motioned with his head that we should follow him.

  The security guard gathered up “Sulky” as I was calling the patron for the moment, with one arm and pushed him forward in front of him toward the double swinging doors that led to the restaurant kitchen. I was beginning to form a picture of what had happened. It happened a lot on days like this and in this party type atmosphere.

  As we walked through the bustling kitchen, Antonio said back to me, “Dine ‘n dash repeat offender. He’s managed to get us for nearly two hundred dollars worth of food on the last two occasions, but not this time.”

  He stopped and pointed the security guard to a white-painted cinderblock wall. “Here’s good,” he said. The security guard, whose name I managed to glean from his name-tag was Jerol, stopped Sulky, spun him around, and pushed him with a hand up against the wall with a thud.

  A bag that Sulky had been carrying with him fell to the floor, spilling its contents. There were several wrapped items that looked like a hamburger, a sandwich of some sort, and some other items I couldn’t quite make out. There was also a bottle of ketchup, some silverware, and a big wad of napkins.

  Antonio then pulled a digital camera from his pocket and snapped a few pictures of the guy. “These pictures are going to be forwarded to our security department, and all the hotel’s restaurants. I’ll also be forwarding them to all the hotels and restaurants in the downtown area,” he told Sulky, who remained silent and tried his best to avoid eye-contact with us. “We’ll be on the lookout for you next time.”

  We never actually forwarded the photos on to any other places beyond our own hotel, but guys like this didn’t know that.

  “If we catch you here again, we’ll involve the police. Got it?”

  Sulky nodded glumly.

  It was often more of a pain in the butt to detain these guys and involve the police than it was worth. It took too much time on all sides, and it typically didn’t do a lot to deter repeat offenders. But I knew what did help deter them.

  While I wasn’t a gamer, I had learned a little something from their role-playing.

  “I’ll take it from here, Antonio.”

  Sulky looked a little surprised by this turn of events, as if he hadn’t even realized that in my street clothes I was associated with the hotel in any way.

  Antonio looked relieved. “Thanks,” he said.

  I knew he had a packed restaurant and bar to deal with. He didn’t need to be screwing around with this piece of garbage any longer than he had to.

  “Jerol, you mind?” I asked.

  The towering security guard shook his head silently, and with one hand, pulled Sulky off the wall by his jacket collar. While I was no slouch, I didn’t have anything on Jerol when it came to size and intimidation factor…at least not physically.

  “Follow me,” I said, heading out the back entrance of the kitchen. I proceeded to lead them
through as many back hallways and lost areas of the hotel as I could think of before we took a service elevator up to the roof. Jerol was probably wondering what in the hell I was doing, but he never let on. The good thing about dealing with people like Sulky was that they didn’t know me. They didn’t know my true character. They didn’t know that I would never do any of the things I was going to tell them I would, and maybe more importantly, they didn’t know the Lanigan and its layout.

  By the time we reached the old owner’s suite up on the roof, Sulky definitely knew something was up. He was trying not to show it, but I could tell he was scared. He was lost, confused, and I knew that even the most photographic of memories would have trouble remembering how the hell we got up here or how to get back down.

  I unlocked the door leading into the suite.

  Since we no longer used the space for anything, none of the lights in the suite worked. A few grime-covered windows barely lit the large living room space into which we entered, and they gave the place a foggy appearance.

  Almost all the furniture had been removed from the area. Just a couple rickety folding chairs had been left from a few years ago when some of the property operations guys were using this as their secret breakroom. There was some old rope and a few ancient electrical cords strewn about the stained, tattered, and cigarette-burned orange shag carpeting. An overturned five-gallon bucked beside the chairs had served as a makeshift table/ash tray and remained from when the property ops guys had been hiding out up here.

  I knew that what I doing was a little crazy, and maybe even bordered on kidnapping, but Sulky was so damn complacent in the whole thing. He’d never refused to go along with what I was doing. Plus, I was pretty buzzed from all the beer.

  At first, I think he just figured we were heading to the security office so that I could document the whole situation and copy his identification to keep him from gaining entrance to the hotel again. Now however, I’m sure he was starting to have second thoughts.

  “What the hell is this place?” he mumbled.

  “Somewhere no one comes anymore,” I said. “Except me, and people I don’t like.”