BENNINGTON P.I. “BONITA” (14 page)

The hotel had upgraded its billing system since I last stayed there.  The young man held one of those new electrical pad devices with a display screen showing my name and room number, the cost of the breakfast, and a space at the bottom of the screen for me to sign. 

Now I understand the whole innovations are a good thing, but I gotta tell you, I miss the old pen and paper days.  It just seemed more real to me, you know?  Like all that paperwork inside of Walt’s manila envelope.  He was old school too, and old school is something I both appreciate and understand.

Like all the paperwork in Walt’s envelope.

A brief tingle ran up my spine, as I realized I teetered on the brink of something big.  A break through.  Understanding.  A clue.

A display screen showing my name and room number, the cost of the breakfast…

“Everything ok sir?”

I nodded without looking back at the hotel employee, trying to keep my mind focused on the image that was struggling to reveal itself to me.

“Yes, thank you.”

I closed the hotel room door slowly and looked down at the small breakfast cart.

Walt’s paperwork… A display screen showing my name and room number, the cost of the breakfast…

Though the desk was just a few paces from where I stood, the time it took to cover the distance inside of the small hotel room felt like forever as my mind raced to clamp down on what I believed was finally an explanation as to what Walt had uncovered.

I took out the stack of papers once again and withdrew the one with the pyramid graph and the names with the corresponding numbers that Walt had written in by hand.  Each set of numbers next to each of the names was eight digits.

My hands shook slightly as I fumbled through the other papers trying to locate the two I believed to be some kind of bank statement.  When I found them, I placed the bank statement alongside the pyramid graph, my eyes scanning carefully from left to right.

The numbers matched.

I located the sheet with the pyramid graph that had the names and what I earlier thought to be multiple random numbers.  Those numbers weren’t random though.  I was able to match those exact numbers to the middle set of numbers in one of the rows contained in the bank statement.  For instance, the number Walt had assigned to the former United Nations Secretary General within the pyramid graph matched up to a number on the bank statement, and on that same row was then a monetary amount indicating just over nine million dollars, money that Walt’s graph made clear linked back to Global Electric.

I repeated this process with every name contained in the pyramid graph, each time matching that name up with a deposit line on the bank statement pages.  This was the puzzle Walt had figured out.  How he did it I had no idea, nor why he did it, leading me back again to the question of who had hired him in the first place.

I looked down to see my hands were still shaking, and I could feel a thin layer of sweat covering my forehead.  If this truly was what it appeared to be, this thing was big, and frankly, I knew it was something far too big for me to navigate alone.  Doing that would get me killed.

And that’s why Walt came to me.  He knew he needed help with this.  Probably thought my political connections could give him an idea of who to hand all of this over to.  That still doesn’t tell me who had him doing this work in the first place though.

My cell phone indicated it was nearly 10:00.  I had another hour before the hotel check out time.  Time enough to eat my breakfast, take a quick shower, and hopefully by then, figure out what the hell my next move would be.

I was halfway finished with breakfast when my cell phone rang again, the number indication simply stating “unknown caller”.

“This is Bennington – who’s this?”

A female voice responded immediately.

“Mr. Bennington, please listen carefully.  You have no more than a minute to vacate your room before they arrive.  Do not use the elevator.  Do not leave through the lobby.  One minute Mr. Bennington.  Go.  NOW.”

20.

Something in the woman’s voice, her tone, her calm sense of urgency, convinced me the intended warning was legit.  I stumbled about clumsily getting dressed and was halfway to the door only to realize I had left Walt’s file sitting on the desk.

“Shit!”

I turned back, grabbed the paperwork and jammed it back inside of my jacket while opening the hotel room door slowly, poking my head out into the hallway for any sign of someone approaching.

Thankfully, the hallway was clear.

Do not use the elevator.

The stairwell was to my left, while the elevator was located on the opposite end of the hallway to my right.  I jogged toward the stairwell, feeling my lungs already straining from the kind of exertion I tended to avoid if at all possible.  As my hand reached out to open the stairwell door, I heard the sound of the elevator opening from down the hall.

Someone was coming.

Closing the door behind me as quietly as possible, I then peered through the small glass window that was in the upper center of the steel framed door.  Two men, shoulder to shoulder, walked with determined focus down the hallway toward my room.  Each were dressed identically in matching navy blue suits, deep red ties, and crisp collared white dress shirts.  The man on the left was slightly shorter though at least ten years older, perhaps as old as sixty.  His thinning, grey hair was cut short against his scalp.  His long, lean face deeply lined around the eyes and mouth, and his eyes were a hard granite blue that even from the nearly sixty feet that separated us, sent a shiver running down me as I felt my pacemaker assisted heart pounding inside of my chest.

The other younger man had softer features, combined with a full head of dark hair combed neatly to the left side.  Even though the two walked side by side, his body language made it apparent he deferred to the older man.

I receded further to the side behind the stairwell door so just my right eye could watch as the two men stood directly in front of my hotel room door and the younger of the two then knocked forcefully three times.  They stood and waited for a response that would not come.  There was something in how they stood so still and quiet after knocking on the door that convinced me if I had still been in that room, I would never have come out of it alive.

Deciding then I had seen more than enough for now, I began making my way slowly down the stairs, hoping the sound of my descent would not echo through the stairwell door above me and into the hallway where the two men stood.  A minute later and I was back on the lobby floor, though still hiding inside the stairwell.

Do not leave through the lobby.

My phone rang, the noise startling me and causing me to look up in panic, fully expecting to hear a door opening from above me followed by footsteps intent on tracking me down.

Thankfully, the stairwell remained, but for my own presence, quiet.  The caller id once again indicated “unknown caller”.

I whispered into the phone.

“This is Bennington.”

The reply was from the same female voice who spoke to me earlier, and in doing so, likely saved my life.

“Are you out of the hotel yet Mr. Bennington?”

I peered through the door glass and saw a near empty lobby.  There was no sign of the two men I had just seen outside my room.

“No, working on it.  Who are you?”

“Right now, that’s not important Mr. Bennington.  What is important is that you get outside and walk directly toward Lafayette Park across the street from the hotel.  I suggest you run Mr. Bennington, as fast as possible.  There is a light blue cab waiting for you there being driven by one of our people.  His name is Ahmed.  You’ll see his name and photo on display inside of the cab.  He will take you to safety.

Get moving Mr. Bennington.  You’re running out of time.”

The woman ended the call, leaving me alone inside the stairwell of the Hay-Adams hotel, trying to figure out how in the hell I was to get back outside without walking through the lobby.

The fire escape!

That was how I got out of here.  Only the employees and a handful of longtime regulars would know about it.  There was an old, rarely used door past the bathrooms of the
Off the Record
that opened into the same alley that me and Arman had dealt with Talbot, Deckler, and Tony yesterday.  Every now and again it was a way for high profile clients of the hotel or bar to enter and leave without being seen by the public.  In D.C., discretion is everything to such people, and that door was one of the working secrets for those of us who had been around here awhile. 

Getting downstairs to the bar meant I would have to skirt the back wall of the hotel lobby to make my way there.  That would keep me about forty feet from the entrance door.  Hopefully that would be enough.

I opened the stairwell door and tried to walk as casually as my frayed nerves would allow toward the stairs located at the back of the hotel lobby leading down to the bar below.  My eyes looked straight ahead as my mind shouted for my feet to simply keep moving everything forward toward the stairs.  I sensed more than saw one of the hotel attendants looking up at me briefly from behind the lobby desk as I neared the stairs.  I allowed myself a quick look behind me and was grateful to see the young woman had already gone back to working at the computer screen in front of her.  No one else appeared to be in the lobby.

Letting out a slow, grateful breath, I made my way quickly downstairs to the
Off the Record. 
The bar had just opened, and was empty except for Reg, the seemingly always present bartender.

“Well-well, Mr. Bennington!  Don’t usually see you this early in the day!  You gonna be sitting at your regular table?”

I walked past Reg with a thin smile across my face, shaking my head.

“No thank you Reg, just gonna use the restroom.”

Seemingly satisfied with my response, Reg went back to wiping down the bar.

“Hey, don’t mess it up in there.”

I kept walking as fast as I could without breaking into a run.  Reg probably thought I had some kind of need-to-go-now prostate troubles.  I was certainly old enough for that kind of shit.  I followed the hallway past the restrooms and to the very back where the fire escape door was located.  Before reaching the door, I heard voices coming from the main area of the bar, and what I believed was my name being spoken.  This was followed by Reg responding in an unusually loud voice back to whoever was questioning him.

“No sir, haven’t seen a Mr. Frank Bennington here this morning.  He never comes in this early.  Actually, don’t see much of him at all anymore.  I heard he quit drinking!”

I felt myself smiling in gratitude at Reg’s clever warning to me.  The volume of his response allowed me to know my followers were right behind me.  It was time I moved my old ass out of here quick and to the hopefully, still waiting cab outside.  And the thought of me quitting drinking made it all the more funny.

I pushed open the door and felt a rush of unusually cold for this time of year air hit my face.  While the cold air was a surprise, what I really didn’t expect was for a fire alarm to go off.

Why God do you persist in pissing in my cheerios at the absolute worst possible moment?

Obviously sometime between the 90’s and now, the hotel decided to actually modernize the fire escape door at the back of the bar.  Full on panic set in as I scrambled outside and closed the door behind me.  It was nearly fifty yards to the street in front of the hotel, and another hundred yards to the Lafayette Park entrance the woman on the phone instructed me to get to.

That was a lot of go fast running for a sixty four year old heart attack victim, but run I did.  I’m sure I was no threat to qualify for the Olympics sprint team, but I got my tired old butt moving down that alley and to the street as fast as physics, and accumulated years of high mileage hard living would allow.