Flashpoint (7 page)

When I reached her she said, ‘It's locked, Dev! It's
locked
!' She stepped aside. She wanted me to be the magic man, to fix this. I wished I could.

I tried the fancy filigreed doorknob knowing it would be no use. Then my voice joined Maddy's in calling out for Elise to let us in.

‘Kick the door in! Kick the door in! Hurry, Dev!'

Thanks to the movies and television – not to mention at least a century of fiction – people have the impression that a kick or two will pop a door open in under a minute. And true, there are some old doors that probably wouldn't put up much resistance. But any reasonably well-made door in any reasonably well-made frame requires energy and a little time. Especially if the door resides inside a home as expensive as this one.

So while Maddy continued to scream I set about throwing myself against the door a few times, then slamming my foot into a space just under the doorknob.

Then a funny thing happened. It shouldn't have been funny – after all, we might find a dead woman in the room, and maybe it was only funny to me anyway – but just as I raised my leg and leaned forward to assault said door again it was opened from inside and I went stumbling head-first across the threshold, then slammed drunken-moose style into Elise and ended up sprawled across the floor.

‘Oh, God, Dev, I'm so sorry.'

So she wasn't dead. Or wounded.

‘I'm fine,' I said. ‘What the hell happened?'

Maddy was already holding her mother, which was fine with me. That way they were too busy to watch me scramble to my feet. I do, after all, have my dignity. I'll always be the seventh-grader who lives in fear of being humiliated in front of girls. Who gives a shit what boys think of you.

Elise had started to cry again. ‘I tried to kill myself, Maddy. Or that's what I thought I was doing. I put the gun to my temple but at the last minute I jerked it away and the bullet just went into the wall. I'm so sorry. Then I was too ashamed to come to the door!'

Her arms dangled over Maddy's shoulders. Neither of them appeared to realize that Elise still held a Smith & Wesson .45 in her right hand. She didn't even seem to realize when I slipped it from her fingers.

By now Mrs Weiderman had reached us. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Logan!'

‘Oh, Mrs Weiderman, I did such a stupid thing!'

‘You did no such thing, Mrs Logan. Now I'm going to take you into the guest room and turn the covers back for you and you're going to lie down and relax while I bring you some hot cocoa with those little marshmallows you like so much. Isn't that right, Maddy?'

But Maddy was too distracted to respond. Her mother had fainted dead in her arms.

W
hen I reached the desk at Linton's only decent hotel – and the only likely place where Tracy Cabot would stay – I joined a group of four men and one woman who were doing everything except climbing over the registration desk and throttling the nervous-looking young man who was spit-and-polish enough to pass the meanest corporate test.

The reporters were local. They had no idea who I was, which was to my advantage. A Chicago man or woman might recognize me because I'd been around so long.

The clerk said, ‘This gentleman would like to get through. I'd appreciate it if you'd stand down the counter, please.'

They were not happy, the dears. I was interrupting the fun they were having tormenting the kid.

‘Welcome to the Regency. May I help you, sir?'

‘Thanks. I'll need a single for a few days.' By tomorrow morning there would be no rooms to let.

I'd brought a suitcase with two changes of clothes and balled-up underwear and socks. After signing my credit card slip, I carried the suitcase over by the elevators where a bellman who appeared to be in his sixties watched me suspiciously. He was a sharp and cynical sixty and he probably watched everybody suspiciously. He'd seen it all and maybe done it all and he knew that we've all got it in us.

‘You want some help, sir?'

His jacket was ruby red with gold-sprayed buttons and epaulets that looked in danger of slipping off. His tan trousers were as faded as his blue eyes.

‘Not with my bag.' I set the suitcase down and said, ‘But I do need to ask you about a woman.'

‘You mean to hook up with?'

Nice to know I looked like the kind of guy desperate enough to have to pay for sex. ‘No. Somebody who might be staying here.'

‘Oh. Good. Because I could lose my job otherwise. So who's the lady?'

I described her.

‘Sounds like the Cabot woman. That's why all those reporters are over there. A cop said somebody killed her out at the senator's cabin.'

Amazing how quickly and how much the press had already picked up on. Amazing and terrifying for us.

‘So she's been staying here?'

‘Oh, yeah. I'd have to check to be sure but I'd say four, five nights offhand.'

The Regency would probably get a B rating in one of those travel guides. It had a kind of worn opulence like a grand dame on her uppers. The other bellmen I'd seen were much younger than this guy and much more clean-cut. I suppose every hotel needs a crafty old bastard. He would know where all the bodies were buried, sometimes literally.

‘She get many visitors?'

‘Lots of guys around the restaurant and bar who wanted to be visitors, if you know what I mean.'

‘How about anybody who actually got into her room?'

‘One. This little bastard. Thought he was pretty important. Like they say, you can tell a lot about a guy by the way he treats the help.'

‘He have a name?'

‘She called him Howie.'

‘Howie? Howie
Ruskin
?'

‘Oh, yeah. Come to think of it, that's what that candy-ass desk clerk called him. Mr Ruskin. He some kind of big deal?'

He obviously didn't understand the implication of what he'd just told me.

Ruskin. Howie Ruskin. I'd never met him, but I'd heard way too much about him. In college he'd been a supporter of our party. Then, or so the story goes, he switched parties because a girl he loved dumped him. She'd been on our side. In revenge he spent his years as a political saboteur doing everything he could to demolish us. He was especially good at opposition research and at using the press to spread rumors. He was equally good at setting up traps for unwary politicians. His specialty was using women (or men on a few occasions) to seduce said politician and then outing the relationship. This had worked at least nine times in critical elections. It had brought down six of the nine, which was a damned good record. Throughout this time he'd paid a ghostwriter to concoct three bestsellers for him.

Then there was Howie himself. Good Catholic boy/man in his late-thirties now. He was five-four and weighed around two hundred pounds. He was losing his hair and insisted on fitting his ball-like body with the latest fashions, said fashions being designed for teen-gaunt bodies. Once or twice a year you could see him on TMZ or in one of the supermarket rags on the arm of a model or a starlet. A publicist had always set it up for him. I was told that, pathetically, Ruskin had convinced himself these women actually wanted to go out with him.

My favorite Ruskin story involved Mensa, the organization for people whose IQ registers in the top two percent of all humanity. He qualified as brilliant; the problem was he also qualified as one of the most obnoxious self-promoters the group had ever had to deal with. There were so many stories about his jerk-off behavior at various functions that his publicist had pulled him out of the organization.

Among his other problems was his gambling addiction. By all accounts he was a terrible poker player but insisted on spending hours with some of the pros. He'd lost a lot of money – he'd also tried to welsh by claiming he'd been cheated. One of the pros, obviously a man of little sensitivity, sent a goon after Howie baby and gave him a black eye. Another apparently suggested he might meet with a fatal accident if he didn't pay up within twenty-four hours. It was whispered that at any given time somebody in Vegas had it in for him.

The one thing his publicist hadn't been able to do was disarm him. Because of his connection to the other side and its connection with judges all over the country, Ruskin was always armed with a Glock, insisting that ‘they' (meaning us) were out to get him. Any time he got hassled by law enforcement he just made a call, and whoever he talked to made a call and Ruskin went back to spending his time wooing fabulous babes – another one of his problems.

‘Is he staying in the hotel?'

‘Four thirty-eight.'

‘How many times did you see them together?'

‘I work four to midnight. The last week I'd say I saw them together every night around dinner time. And a couple of times in the bar.'

Howie Ruskin. I was going to meet the bastard.

‘You see her with anybody else?'

‘Hey, seems you're getting a lot of talk for nothing. I'm a working man.'

I eased my wallet out of my back pocket and laid a fifty across his open palm.

‘I've seen her with about a couple dozen guys since she was here who tried to pick her up.' The grin gave him a satanic look. ‘She's probably the most beautiful woman who's ever been in this town, if you want to put it that way.'

‘Any of them succeed?'

‘I don't think so. She got rid of them pretty fast. She wasn't much of a flirt. She'd shut them down fast. She wasn't mean or anything; she just wasn't interested.'

This was the woman who'd come on to Robert so openly and seductively. But that had been her job. Robert's mind had gotten caught in his zipper and he hadn't figured it out until it was too late, despite my warning.

‘Did you ever see the senator in the hotel?'

The grin again. ‘Talk about somebody whose ass is in a sling, huh?'

‘So did you ever see him here?'

‘No.'

‘Was she ever involved in any kind of incident?'

‘What does that mean?'

‘Any kind of trouble or anything. Did she just have a nice, quiet stay?'

‘Quiet except for everybody who wanted to sniff her panties.'

‘How about her room? Have the police been up there yet?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Could you get me in if they haven't?'

He took a deep breath. ‘That'd get me fired for sure.' He was working both sides of the street. He was genuinely worried about losing his job while setting me up for a big raise in pay. ‘You'd really have to pay me.'

‘How much?'

‘Three hundred.'

‘Two.'

‘Two seventy-five.'

‘Two-fifty.'

‘Hell, I guess I might as well take it.'

After I paid him all I had was a five and two ones in my wallet.

‘How about putting my suitcase in my room after?' I was still lugging it along.

‘Oh. Yeah. Right.'

He took it and surprised me by not asking for more money.

Except for a maid in a light-blue uniform pushing her cart down the hall, this end of the fourth floor was quiet. I could see from here that the room had not been sealed, though likely it would be very soon. In the elevator Earl Leonard – he'd finally told me his name and it hadn't cost me a cent – had begun breathing in tight little spurts. There was the gleam of sweat on his wolf face. He really was worried.

‘I'm going to make this easy for you, Earl,' I said now. ‘You let me in and then you take off. If I get nailed I'll say that I was able to open the lock.'

‘You know how?'

‘Maybe.' I was good but not great.

‘I'd appreciate it. And you won't mention me?'

‘Not to anybody.'

So now we stood at the door. He looked both ways, advertising that we shouldn't be doing what we were doing. When he got it open he pushed it in and said, ‘It's all yours, man.'

Then he was double-timing it to the elevator. What he hadn't remembered and what I hadn't wanted to bring up was that the hall was undoubtedly on security cameras. But I was hoping it wouldn't come to that. There'd be no reason for anybody to check the tape. I expected to stay no longer than a few minutes in her room.

The room was done in contrasting blues. Twin beds, an open closet area packed solid with clothes and at least a dozen pairs of shoes below. Cosmetics and perfumes clouded the air with intoxicating aromas and dresses and blouses were strewn across one of the beds.

The phone rang once and scared the hell out of me. It was as loud as a shriek in the hotel room.

I needed thirty seconds to relax and then I went back to work, conscious of needing to get the hell out of there.

I quickly went through both the desk drawers and the closet and didn't find anything useful. The small blue carry-on piece of luggage shoved under the same bed as the clothes was another matter.

I counted fourteen articles from various Internet sources about Senator Robert Logan. Long articles that went into his entire life; one article was an interview with some friends of his from high school. Then there were overviews of his time as a wealthy businessman and finally his decision to enter politics and how this led all the way to the United States Senate. She had taken her masters in the subject of Senator Logan.

In the manila envelope I found a dozen photos of her and the senator. All but one of them was staged at his rallies. Each of them gave the unmistakable impression that she and the senator were more than what you might call mere acquaintances. She made sure of that by looking as though she was about to go down on him. She knew what she was doing. And he stood there looking smitten like a horny tenth-grader.

In another drawer I found a white number-ten envelope with photographs of Tracy Cabot at various ages. The photos spanned maybe twenty years from her teens – fourteen or fifteen – to the present. She'd always been a heartbreaker.