by G. M. Ford
“So you had nothing to do with this? You just happen to be here in town this week? In a week when you just happen to be on the cover of People magazine.”
Corso sighed. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Carl. I’m here because my publisher sent me.” He gestured toward the magazine. “Apparently, this is an idea he’s had in the works for some time. Also apparently, I’m going to have to have a few words with him regarding keeping me in the loop.” She started to speak, but Corso raised his voice and kept talking. “So…just so we’re clear with each other…ready?” She didn’t respond. “I have no intention of writing about this place. Not now. Not ever. This isn’t my kind of story. I like ’em easy, and if this one were easy, somebody would have figured it out by now. I’ve tried solving the big mystery before and ended up looking like an idiot.”
“With your history, Mr. Corso, it’s kinda hard to know which incident you’re referring to. Are you talking about the time you were fired by the New York Times for fabricating a story and the subsequent twenty-million-dollar judgment against the paper?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Or that time you led Texas authorities to believe you knew the whereabouts of a murdered woman. Or maybe the incident in Minnesota when…”
“Take your pick,” Corso snapped. With a curt nod, he turned and strode away, toward the back of the parking lot, where they’d left Carl’s Honda. For a dozen strides, the only sounds to reach his ears were the sounds of his boots on the pavement and the brittle clatter of the wind in the bare trees. Then he heard the slapping of soles and the huffing and puffing as Carl jogged up even with him, his breath rising toward the sky in plumes. “You’ve sure got a way with people,” Carl panted.
“It’s a gift,” Corso said.
2
“I keep telling you, I don’t work this way,” Corso rasped into the phone. “I can’t operate with people looking over my shoulder.”
“We like to think of ourselves as a team.”
It was like talking to a wall. No matter how many times he told the guy he didn’t need any help, all he got back were corporate platitudes.
With his free hand, Corso massaged his temple. He walked to the window and used the plastic rod to pull the gold curtain aside. Beyond the hotel parking lot and the rocky beach, the expanse of gray water loomed immense. Even in darkness, he could make out the whitecaps churning this way and that in a frenzied stew of wind and weather.
“I’m out of here first thing in the morning,” Corso said.
“Kevin’s going to be very disappointed.”
“Kevin’s a big boy. That’s how you get to have ‘publisher’ painted on your door. He’ll get over it.”
A pin-drop moment passed.
“Of course, you’ll be in violation of your contract.”
“I’ll what?”
“The performance clause.”
“Which says what?”
“Which says that you will take assignments as directed and pursue them with all professional dispatch.”
“Professional dispatch?”
“If memory serves.”
Corso turned his back to the window and paced to the center of the room. “I quit,” he said. “I’ll have my accountant return your advance. Tell Kevin I’m sorry we couldn’t do business.” He pulled the phone from his ear and started to push the disconnect button when he heard squawking.
“What?” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Plus the eight-million-dollar default payment.”
Corso drew a shallow breath. “You’re telling me that…that if I quit now, I owe you eight million dollars.”
“Plus legal expenses, of course.”
Corso felt the blood rising in his cheeks. Twice he started to speak but thought better of it. The muscles along the side of his jaw twitched. He pulled the receiver away from his mouth and took several deep breaths. “You’ll be hearing from my attorneys,” he said finally. “In the meantime. I’ll be pursuing the matter with…what was it…?”
“Professional dispatch.”
“Yes. That’s it. Professional dispatch.”
Corso used his thumb to break the connection. He threw the cell phone onto the bed, where it bounced twice before coming to rest.
Corso crossed the carpet in two long strides, picked up the house phone and dialed fourteen. Four rings, then, “Housekeeping.”
He asked to have a pair of feather pillows sent up.
“Oh…well…I’m not sure if we…I’ll…”
“Buy them if you have to. Put them on my bill, but get a couple of feather pillows up here.”
“Oh yes…I’ll…”
Corso hung up before he cursed. Angry with himself for taking his frustrations out on the help. Angry about his arrogance. Angry about the effect money seemed to be having on his life. He cursed again before he snatched the cell phone from the bed. He extended the antenna and walked over by the window.
“Sandstrom, Ellis and Taylor.” A voice as smooth as honey.
“Peter Sandstrom please,” Corso said.
“I’m afraid Mr. Sandstrom…”
“This is Frank Corso.” More of that damn arrogance, but who cared?
As he waited, Corso wondered if the phrase “on the line” was relevant anymore. Whether any kind of tangible connection existed between two people conversing on cell phones. Was there a line? A beam? A something? Four minutes and half a dozen electronic clicks later, Peter Sandstrom came on the line.
“Frank,” he said.
Corso skipped the pleasantries and platitudes and got to the point. When he was finished talking, a silence settled over the line. Then suddenly Corso could hear raised voices in the background. “Where are you?” he asked.
“On the fifth tee at Ballantine. You know…that wicked uphill dogleg to the right.”
“You’ve got to get me out of this contract.”
Corso thought he might have heard a short dirty laugh before Sandstrom began to speak. “I’m up next on the tee, Frank, so I’m going to make this short and sweet. You’re swimming in the deep end of the pool, baby. Maybe a dozen people in the whole country make as much money writing as you do now. And…” He drew it out. “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You’ve put them in the position where the only way they’re going to see their money back is to promote you like the second coming of Christ.” Background voices again. “I’ll look at the contract, Frank, but I’m telling you the same thing I told you at the time. It’s all very much status quo, comes with the territory kind of stuff. You have an obligation to follow up on their suggestions, and they have an obligation to provide you with the necessary resources. It’s that simple. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.” The voices again. Louder this time.
“But eight million bucks?”
Peter Sandstrom made a dismissive noise with his lips. “That’s a piss hole in the snow compared to what they gave you, man. Relax. They’re just covering their collective asses in case you’re a complete bust like that Graham woman. You remember her? With the Margaret Thatcher hair? Took all that up-front money from Random House and never wrote another line. Not a syllable. You remember?”
Corso’s grunt suggested the possibility of recall. A knock sounded from the hall. Corso shifted the phone to his left ear as he skirted the bed and made his way to the door, where he pulled back the safety lock, at which point the door burst open.
Had Corso not been six feet six, the initial onslaught would have convulsed his solar plexus and the action would have been over before it began. As it was, the big one’s ski-masked head hit him right in the belly, bending him at the waist, driving him backward across the carpet, with the cell phone twirling off into space as Corso let himself be propelled across the room where he finally planted a foot, grabbed the guy’s red plaid jacket with both hands and pistoned up a vicious knee to the groin.
The knee found a home. The guy groaned and staggered. Corso went down onto his back, pulling his a
ttacker with him, using the guy’s weight and momentum to propel him up, over and out into space. Wasn’t until the guy came down on the desk with a horrendous crash that Corso saw the second one.
Same ski mask…different intentions. This one had a hypodermic syringe locked in his right glove. The steel-wire point glistened with a drop of something silver as it rocketed downward toward Corso’s throat. A cry escaped Corso’s mouth as he threw his body hard to the left. The needle missed. The guy cursed.
His assailant brought the hand back up by his ear and was about to make another plunge when Corso put his full weight and his considerable length of bone behind a kick to his antagonist’s knee, the impact of which drove the joint sideways in a direction in which it had never been intended to flex. Sounded like somebody snapped a twig. The guy dropped the syringe, lowered his seat onto the carpet and reached for his knee. A high-pitched keening sound filled the room as he rocked back and forth in pain.
Corso was in the process of scrambling to his feet when a heavy boot caught him squarely in the ribs, driving the air from his lungs with a great whoosh and sending a wave of pain flooding throughout his body. He rolled again, moving his face in time to deflect the sole of the boot, sending the force raking down over his ear and onto the carpet below.
He went fetal and waited for the boot to crash into his head. He felt blood on the side of his face as he peeked out through the crook in his elbow, then rolled to his knees in time to see the bigger of the two helping his maimed partner out through the door.
Sitting on the floor, just inside the jamb, a heavyset Hispanic maid had her head thrown back like a coyote baying at the moon. Her wavy black hair shook slightly as she howled for all she was worth.
3
C orso flinched as the medical technician worked on the tear in his right ear. “You really ought to go to the hospital,” the tech said again. “Get this thing fixed right.”
“I’ll get it looked at as soon as I get home,” Corso assured him.
The guy’s face said he didn’t believe a word of it. He shook his head as he sat back on his heels, peeled off his surgical gloves and looked up at the cop who’d been hovering over the two of them for the past ten minutes. “That’s all I can do from here,” he announced. “Long as he don’t tear it open while he’s sleeping, he ought to be all right.” The cop nodded and helped him to his feet.
They’d pulled an armchair out into the hall, where a Spanish-speaking officer had managed to get the maid calmed down enough to answer questions.
Corso got to his feet. The room reeled and gamboled. He reached down and put a hand on the bed to steady himself. After a moment, he crossed the room, went into the bathroom and closed the door. His legs felt unsteady, so he sat on the closed lid of the commode and put his face in his hands. After a while, he got to his feet, put both hands on the rim of the sink and looked into the mirror. A trio of medical staples held the top of his ear in place. A thick red scrape ran from his hairline to his jawbone.
He turned on the cold water, scooped up a double handful and splashed it on his face. He sputtered, took a deep breath and repeated the process. Then again and again, until the frigid water began to clear his head.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. Asked if he was okay. He said he was fine, dried his face and hands with a towel and stepped back into what had once been his hotel room. The pair of cops was comparing notes over by the door. On the far side of the room, the forensic team was packing up its gear and getting ready to leave.
The flattened remnants of the desk were decorated here and there with the remains of Corso’s room service steak dinner. Someone had opened a window, allowing a stiff lake breeze to fan the curtains across the floor like long, gold fingers.
A guy about thirty slipped into the room. He wore a gold badge on the pocket of his blue pin-striped suit. He limped over to Corso and put a concerned hand on his elbow. The badge said his name was Randy Shields, hotel manager. The facial expression said his leg hurt and he’d rather be elsewhere.
“I can’t tell you how sorry we are, Mr. Corso,” he whispered.
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
Corso’s largesse seemed to relieve him. “We have a new room for you,” the guy said. “Two floors up on the lake side. Whenever you’re ready just call the desk and…” He held up a hand. Boy Scout’s honor. “On the house, of course.”
Corso nodded his thanks and pocketed the new plastic key. If there was anything the hotel could do…anything…just anything…Corso kept nodding and trying to smile.
“You from here?” Corso finally asked. “I mean like born and raised.”
The guy laughed. “I’m from here, but been gone for the past eighteen years.”
“You know Nathan Marino?”
“Not personally. I knew of him. Knew his older brother James. We were in the same high school class. Nathan was a few years behind us.”
“What happened to your leg?”
“Kuwait. Shrapnel from a booby-trapped car.”
The cops ambled over. As cops go, these two were a bit long in the tooth. By the time they got to their midforties, most cops were either so burned-out they couldn’t function or so corrupt they didn’t need the pension. These two still shined their brass and polished their shoes, and both wore sergeant’s stripes. That’s where the similarities ended. The bald one had the palest blue eyes Corso had ever seen. Made him look like a vampire. The one with the mustache was Hispanic. Not a Mexican. Something else.
“Guess we got everything we’re going to get,” mustache said.
His partner checked his notepad. “You and Mrs. Casamayor agree right on down the line. Two guys. Blue ski masks. One noticeably bigger than the other. The shorter of the two being helped along by the other guy on the way out.”
Corso nodded. The movement caused his head to spin. He sat down on the bed.
“You’re sure nothing’s missing?” mustache asked.
“This wasn’t a robbery,” Corso scoffed.
The notion seemed to startle them. “You think they meant to harm you?”
“I think they meant to kidnap me,” Corso said. “I think the idea was to render me unconscious and take me away somewhere.”
“You’re basing that on the syringe,” mustache said.
“And the fact that they had a key.”
“I thought you said you unlocked the door.”
“I said I took off the safety bolt. The door should have still been locked, but it wasn’t.”
They snuck a look at each other. Corso didn’t need prompting.
“And the whole way they went about it. You want to assault somebody, you show up with a baseball bat. You want to rob somebody, you jam a gun in his face, you don’t try to wrestle him to the floor and stick a needle in him.”
Separately, they each snuck a look out through the open door.
“What’s in the hall?” Corso demanded.
The bald guy cracked first. “A laundry hamper,” he said. “Nobody from housekeeping has any idea how it got there. They keep them locked in the maintenance closets at the ends of the halls. The maids use those little carts of theirs. They get full, they dump them in the hampers. The hampers themselves are not permitted in the corridors.”
“Ever,” added mustache. “According to Mrs. Casamayor it’s a firing offence.”
“Besides which they quit making up rooms six hours ago.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. Those guys were trying to kidnap me.”
For the first time, the bald cop seemed to consider the possibility that Corso might be onto something.
“We don’t get many kidnappings in Edgewater,” he said finally.
“But then again, we don’t get many celebrities either,” his partner added.
Something in his tone caught Corso’s attention. “So you’re figuring this must be something I brought with me,” he said.
“Only makes sense,” mustache offered.
“How’d
they know where to find a laundry hamper?” Corso asked.
The cops gave a collective shrug.
“You said the maintenance closets were locked.”
“Same key the maids use to get in the rooms.”
“They force the door?” Corso asked.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“How’d they know I was in my room?”
They shrugged in unison. Corso kept at it.
“Sounds to me like they had a lot of inside help. It was me I’d start with the hotel staff…past and present.”
“But it’s not your call now, is it, Mr. Corso?” The voice came floating in from the doorway. Corso had to crane himself around the officers to catch a glimpse of Chief Cummings walking across the carpet. She wore a black wool overcoat buttoned to the throat, over some kind of dress or skirt. The cops began primping like schoolboys as she ambled over their way.
“You boys about finished here?” she asked.
They assured her they were ready to go. She encouraged them to do so. They didn’t have to be encouraged twice. They were in the doorway when she said, “Have the report on my desk for start of business tomorrow.”
She watched them disappear and turned her attention to Corso. She reached out and put her fingers on his chin, turning his head to the right so she could see his damaged ear. “Could have been worse,” she mused.
“Could have been better too.”
“You gotta be careful who you open your door to these days.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Corso assured her.
“In the meantime…you go back to your boat and do whatever it is you writers do. We’ll look into the assault. We need anything, or we have any information for you, we’ll be in touch.”
“It wasn’t an assault,” Corso said. “Those guys were trying to kidnap me.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll see.” She said the words in the tone an adult would use on an unruly child. Corso felt his anger beginning to rise.
A pair of liveried porters showed up at the door. Corso directed them to his belongings. He and the chief stood in silence, watching the young men load Corso’s suitcase and garment bag onto a brass luggage dolly and wheel it out of the room.
