Concierge Confidential (13 page)

“No one's seen her,” the dispatcher told me.

“You know what? Leave. There's nothing you can do.”

“Well, she left a couple of things in the car.”

In a hotel our size, things got lost all the time. I felt responsible. “Just bring them to me. I'll take care of it.”

Not too long after, the driver came and brought Mrs. Kinezevich's pashmina and a bulging manila envelope. It was clasped shut, but it wasn't glued.
This is really weird,
I thought to myself.
What is this?

I took the envelope to the back, where none of the guests could see what I was doing. Inside the envelope was a stack of papers, on top of which was a very official-looking cover letter with a seal on it, like some fancy family crest. It was addressed to Chase Bank. Not to, say, John Farnsworth, Chase Bank Vice President of Client Relations. It literally began with, “Dear Chase Bank.” I started flipping through the pages, skipping past the financial statements to get to the good stuff. I pulled up a chair, knowing that this was going to be a while.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” she had written. “I am Sofiya Kinezevich Lermontov Kyansky”—she had sixteen names, every one Russian—“Romanov. I am the seventh generation of His Majesty” et cetera, et cetera. The point was that she was heiress to the Tsar and his fortune. It was quite formal and I'm sure the honorifics were accurate. Though it was gibberish, it made some sort of sense. In other words, I was clearly looking at the work of a crazy person. Crazy, but learned.

I immediately went to make copies.

She had all these attachments that I tried to make sense of. There were some bad snapshots of herself that were poorly Xeroxed, so that you could barely make them out. In one she looked at the camera and then in another she was in profile, like mug shots. They were meant to prove her resemblance to the Russian dynasty. Then she had different photocopies of every passport she ever had, from childhood to the present day. I recognized the barrettes that she had been wearing that morning.

There were pictures of her pointing to barely visible marks on different parts of her body. It was hard to tell if they were bug bites, bruises, birthmarks, or absolutely nothing.
What is she pointing to?
I wondered. I referred back to the text.

“In 1984,” she wrote, “when I became the bride of Osama bin Laden…” This was before 9/11, and he was hardly in the public consciousness. Mrs. Kinezevich claimed that she was going into the Vatican and there was some controversy. She was kidnapped by conspirators who were working with the Pope, who poisoned her with a scorpion. She was pointing to the marks where it had stung her.

After I finished with the copies, I put the papers back in the envelope. I got a key to her room and I brought her belongings upstairs. I made it a point to fold up her wrap nicely, and put it next to the envelope on her bed. “I'm sorry if there was confusion,” I wrote on a notepad, “but your limo driver brought this back and I wanted to make sure it was with you.” Then I left a message for her on her voicemail to let her know that her things were in her room, and that we had tried to find her. “I'm sure it was a misunderstanding,” I said, sounding very apologetic.

Now I was curious. The next day I looked into her guest folio, checking to see if other hotel employees who dealt with her had had weird experiences. But there wasn't anything remotely strange written in there. Quite the contrary. They were all quite positive and glowing: “Six Continent Club Member” “VVVIP” It wasn't
that
much of a surprise. The basic mentality of hospitality is to never be suspicious. I don't know why I was always the one wondering if things weren't what they seemed. “Wife of Dr. Kinezevich,” I read on, “esteemed practitioner of Beverly Hills.” I rolled my eyes. I could almost hear her dictating to somebody to write that in her file. (Any mentions of bin Laden, the Pope, or Tsar Nicholas were curiously absent from her guest folio, probably on orders from the CIA, the Care Bears, or the Trilateral Commission.)

I couldn't feel completely comfortable until I touched base with her again. I wanted to be sure that she got back to her room and that she had received her papers. But the next day there was neither hide nor hair of Mrs. Sofiya Kinezevich. Instead, the limo company sent over the reconciliation with the charge for her daylong adventure. The bill came to over $1,500, and I didn't know what to do. I worried about losing hundreds of dollars for the commission, and I worried about having to haggle with the car company about settling the bill, and I worried about having to deal with Russian royalty, exiled or otherwise.

The next morning she called down to the concierge desk while I was working, and I was relieved when I saw her name on the caller ID. “Good morning, Mrs. Kinezevich. This is Michael, how may I be of service?”

“You
peasant,
” she snarled.

I was too confused to even respond.
Did she just call me a peasant?
“Excuse me?” I said, wondering if I had misheard her.

“I need you to send housekeeping up here
immediately
.”

There were always problems in the old hotel, like toilets backing up or pipes leaking. “Of course,” I said. “Is there any problem?”

“I think you know,”
she said, scolding me and sounding very alarmed.

Now I had no doubt that she was taking me to task because of something shoddy with the plumbing, that I should have known what kind of hotel I was working in. “I'm so sorry,” I told her. “Is there anything that I can do?”

“I just want you to know that I'm fully aware of your attempt to poison me last night. I took your recommendation to dine at Planet Hollywood. The bathroom is full of towels that have cleaned my vomit and bile up from the floor. I haven't decided how I'm going to handle this.”

PLACES I WOULD ADVISE A GUEST TO DINE BEFORE ADVISING THEM TO “DINE” AT PLANET HOLLYWOOD

Sonic Drive-In—save room for the cheesecake bites

50% off Sushi—go on a Monday

Pluck U—they deliver!

Taco Bell—we all mourn the retired bacon cheeseburger burrito

No. 1 Chinese Restaurant (the one in Bensonhurst)—chicken with garlic sauce

The Bucknell Bison—get the grilled ham hero

“I'm aware of your connection to them,” she concluded.

It was like I had called ahead and said, “I'm sending you Sofiya Kinezevich. You
must
poison her. Just give her bigger portions of your regular menu.”

Now I was starting to get it. The guy with her wasn't her shy, awkward son. He must have been her dealer, and she was totally on drugs.
The lady is whacked,
I thought, as she hung up the phone. I immediately sent up housekeeping to take care of the towels that had cleaned her “vomit and bile.”

Then I started to get scared. I had the limo bill to deal with. I hadn't followed up that much on her Russian swords and books. If she wanted to make trouble, it would have been very easy for her. These were things that really could escalate. I started to do my homework to try to mitigate any havoc that she might wreak.

The first thing I saw in the system was that she had about 190 room nights that year; half the calendar year she had spent at an InterContinental Hotel somewhere in the world. It wasn't like she was just some loony off the street. I wanted to know if anybody else had any crazy stories so that I could start to build my case.

I started calling other properties around the world where she had stayed. It was still morning, so there was plenty of time to call London.

“InterContinental Hotel, this is Cyril speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hi, Cyril. It's Michael Fazio from New York. Listen, I need you to do me a favor. Can you look up Sofiya Kinezevich's file in your local database and tell me if you found anything unusual in there?”

“Sure.” I could hear the clacking of the keyboard as he entered her name into the computer. “Oh! She's a Six Continent Club member!”

“
I know.
But isn't there anything?”

“What are you looking for?”

“I don't know. She's quite an interesting person.”
Did she walk through the lobby naked? Something like that?

“No, I'm sorry. She stayed here, but I don't have any record of anything like that.”

“Thanks anyway,” I said, hanging up the phone.
Where else do I know the staff?
I wondered, scanning the list of cities she stayed in.
Bingo! Chicago. It must have really hit the fan in Chicago. Please please please let it have hit the fan in Chicago.

“InterContinental Hotel, this is Stephen speaking. How can I help you?”

“Stephen, it's Michael. Can you look up Sofiya Kinezevich— K-i-n-e-z-e-v-i-c-h—and tell me what you have in her file on her?”

“Huh.”

I held my breath. “ ‘Huh'? What do you mean? What, what is it?”

“Well, she's a Six Continent Club member.”

“Yes, yes. I know that!”

“There is nothing here about her. I mean, I can tell you how long her stays were but you should be able to access that yourself.”

“I can. Thank you very much.” I hung up the phone and looked into the empty lobby. Nobody could corroborate anything that I was learning. Nobody could help me in any way. Hell, nobody even knew who she was other than in her files. It's not like the Russian embassy would be filling out an affidavit against her.

Then it hit me. I dialed 310-555-1212 to get her husband's number. I wondered if he knew what she was up to. Frankly, I was most concerned about the car service charge. Money drama would bring scowls from management, instead of muffled laughter if I told them about any alleged poisoning attempts.

I called up Dr. Kinezevich's office. “Hello,” I said. “My name is Michael Fazio. I'm the concierge from the InterContinental Hotel and I've been dealing with Mrs. Kinezevich.”

“Yeah,” he said, very lackluster.

“I'm afraid I have a little bit of a problem.”

“Yeah?” he repeated, wanting me to just get to the point.

“It seems that she was using the car service and she didn't come back. It amounted to a pretty significant bill.”

“Is that it?”

“Well, uh, she mentioned that she wasn't exactly feeling well today.”

“Oh God,” he sighed. “Yeah, you know what? Just ignore her. I'll pay the bill.”

I felt so relieved. “Do you think I should call a doctor?”

“No, no. No, it's fine.” He hung up the phone.

That's when I felt a little bad for her. Her husband knew that she's a total loony, and didn't even want to be bothered. Maybe I wouldn't have been as sympathetic if she caused me headaches with my job, but the husband paid the bill and I never had to deal with her again.

She wasn't a bad woman but a crazy woman, and the man with her was probably a handler to make sure she kept out of trouble as she spiraled out of control all over the world. There was fun-crazy and then there was
crazy
-crazy, and she was definitely the latter.

Julian, on the other hand, was definitely the former. He was fun-crazy. A frequent guest at the hotel, Julian was “out there” in the best possible sense of the term. He always challenged me to see what I could come up with next. There was some hot club in Vegas that he wanted to be absolutely sure he could get into.

“Well, you could do the paparazzi trick,” I told him.

“What's that?”

“I had a client who wanted to get into Marquee, so I hired a paparazzo to follow him. He cut through the line like it was nothing.”

I could see the gears turning in Julian's mind. “I
love
that! I could use it to get in
everywhere
in Vegas. Can you arrange it?”

“Sure,” I said. Paparazzi weren't always guaranteed a paycheck for their photos anyway. I was sure there would be plenty who would be amenable to a flat fee for easy work, taking pictures and not having to worry about trying to sell them.

“How many can I get?” Julian said. “Do I get them all night?”

The answers were: eight and yes. He got in at every single club and it went off without a hitch—and now he had a hilariously absurd anecdote to tell people. So when Julian came to the concierge desk one day and wanted to do something special for his wedding anniversary, I knew I had to get creative. His wife loved white roses, and dinner at a nice place was fine, but those things weren't going to cut it by themselves. It was a few weeks away, so I knew I could really go over the top if I planned it right.

“How did you meet?” I asked him. “Maybe we can revisit it and do something with that.”

“It was actually on the train, of all places, from Washington, D.C., to New York. We were on the same car and struck up a conversation. Now that I remember it, it was two cars down from the dining car. Wow, I haven't thought about that in years! Anyway, we ended up talking the whole way. It was almost like a movie. But a train ride isn't very romantic.”