The Hotel Detective (8 page)

It would have been the proper thing, he decided, to have never slept again, to have walked around like Lady Macbeth, doing
a lot of hand rubbing and making lugubrious speeches. His contrition should have been such that he shouldn’t have noticed
earthly things, like being hungry. But he was hungry. That embarrassed him, but not enough for him to forget about the untouched
basket of dinner rolls he had put out with the room service trays the night before. For a time, at least a minute, Carlton
resisted the urge to seek out the rolls. And even when he did, he was convinced he at least felt guilty about it.

Discovering the trays had already been collected provided him a perverse pleasure. Serves me right, he thought. But his penance
was short-lived. Walking back into the room, Carlton noticed the portable bar and soon discovered it offered possibilities
far beyond alcohol.

There was orange juice, and mineral water, and tonic water, and club soda, along with dry-roasted almonds, and macadamia nuts,
and Swiss chocolate, and crackers, and cookies, and pâté, and cheese spread. Carlton figured if this was to be his last meal
before prison, he could do worse, although he was somewhat disappointed in the pâté.

The thought shocked him. Was he that uncaring? He wondered if his amnesia was a way of coping. Or maybe he wasn’t that different
from a cockroach. He had read that cockroaches didn’t have a memory span that went beyond thirty seconds. A half minute after
almost being stepped on, they were ripe for another heel. But was mankind so different? No. He did care. He was sorry. But
he still wasn’t quite ready to give himself up to the police. He started pacing, tired of it, then sat down on the sofa. On
the coffee table was the Hotel’s guest information directory.

At first thumbing, Carlton knew he had unveiled something better than the Home Shopping Network. He could get a massage in
his own room or a mud bath in the spa. There was a tennis pro available for lessons (I always wanted to take up tennis, he
thought) or an aerobics class. The Hotel had gift shops of all sorts. He could call for a book from the library (twenty-five
thousand titles—so much for the Gideon Bible) or get a video. There was everything. The directory progressed from A to Z,
with every letter receiving multiple pages of listings (except for Q, which only had two entries—quahogs, available daily
in the seafood salad bar, and the Queen’s Tea, an English high tea served every afternoon in the Royal Room).

It was the letter
T
that Carlton lingered over the longest. A score of tours were listed. The Hotel tour interested him the most. He was curious
about this place, this temporary sanctuary. He wanted to know more about its history, wanted to walk its grounds. But he couldn’t,
of course. He was just avoiding the inevitable, and besides, his clothes were an incriminating mess. Anyone who saw their
condition might guess at his crime. Missing the tour, Carlton decided, was the metaphor for his life.

Sighing, he started to close the directory when a boxed entry caught his eye. While the Hotel didn’t allow any advertising
in the booklet, it did highlight some of its own services. He saw that on-property dry cleaning was available, and that for
an extra fee, one-hour service was even offered.

Dare I? thought Carlton. He wasn’t behaving as he knew he should. Sackcloth and ashes were the only appropriate garb for him
now. Clothes couldn’t, or shouldn’t, hide his sin. Yet Carlton dialed the boldfaced extension.

“Say,” he said, “I’ve made an awful mess of my suit. I had a bit too much to drink last night, and I suppose you can guess
the rest.

“What’s worse is that it’s the only suit I brought along, and I’ve got a meeting this morning….Could you?…You’re a lifesaver….How
much?…That’s fine. Thank you very much.”

For a price at which some retailers sold suits, the Hotel California promised to clean Carlton’s. The dry cleaner said they
were good at spot cleaning and getting out even the most difficult stains. Carlton stuffed his soiled suit in a laundry bag
provided by the Hotel, and less than five minutes later a bellman knocked on his door. The bellman gratefully accepted Carlton’s
generous tip along with his bag and promised to return the suit within an hour.

While waiting for his dry cleaning, Carlton studied the guest information directory a little more thoroughly. There was a
men’s clothing shop in the Hotel. A crazy thought entered his head.

Maybe I could use another suit.

The turned-around pictures greeted Am on his return to his office. He wouldn't have minded turning around himself and going
home. The incoming already had him ducking: the suicide, the perilous state of his employment, and the truffles. Well, not
the truffles, at least not as much as Marcel's spitting. He wondered who had snitched on him to Kendrick. Useless to conjecture,
he thought. Or was it? Wasn't he the Hotel detective?

The hotel dick. It was a term half a century out of date, a description that brought to mind a smarmy sort, someone as likely
to be looking through a keyhole as protecting a guest from someone doing the same. The title conjured up an image of contraband
hooch, poker games, and smoke-filled rooms. The biography of a house dick would have to be a history gone bad and a position
by default, not a post to which anyone would aspire. Hotel detectives were the sorts thrown off their police force for petty
theft or brutality. Houses of sin were just the place for them, sordid operations where they could supplement their income
by running call girls or blackmailing the unwary.

Kendrick had made him the Hotel detective. So be it. There was one place Tim Kelly was still alive. Am turned on his computer
and pulled up Kelly's account. At first glance, the display didn't tell him much. Kelly had checked in two days ago as part
of the Contractors Association group. His convention had been given a special rate, if you could call $172 a night a special
rate. Am scanned the charges. There was nothing unusual about Kelly's bill, except that booze accounted for about half of
it, and that certainly wasn't uncommon. The Hotel California wasn't as generous in camouflaging charges as were other inns.
Boozing businessmen on company expense accounts usually frequent those hotels that magically convert their bar bills into
restaurant charges. “And how was your olive, sir?”

Kelly had closed out his ample bar tab at 1:50 A.M. the night before, had beaten his hangover in the only way possible. His
server had been Katherine “Cat” Ross. Kelly had signed a twenty-dollar tip to her. She'd remember him.

A groundswell of noise at the front desk interrupted Am's study. The chaos in progress sounded even louder than usual. Sneaking
a peek out at the check-out line, Am saw what looked like rush-hour traffic. He wanted to ignore the pileup but immediately
threw himself into the fray. Guests didn't take kindly to having to wait for the privilege of paying over two hundred a night
for their rooms.

“Where's Casper?” he whispered, referring to the front desk manager. “Where the hell is Casper?”

Am had Roger paged, but once again Casper's timing was perfect. He appeared just when the last guest had been helped.

“Roger,” Am said in a voice only he could hear, “I don't have time to run your desk this morning.”

Casper was all innocence. “What? Were there check-outs?”

Am tried to match his Academy Award–winning performance. “Yes.”

“Well,” Roger said indignantly, “all they had to do was beep me.”

Casper’s famous retort. The clerks heard his remark, not for the first time, and rolled their eyes, also not for the first
time. Whenever Casper was beeped it took him five minutes to respond to the page, and by then most situations had resolved
themselves.

“No doubt you were doing something important,” Am said.

“There was a complaint about pigeon dirt on one of the balconies,” Roger said. “I was checking out the situation.”

Am gave him a look that said he thought Roger’s explanation was full of—pigeon dirt. “Look,” he said. “I want you to stay
at the desk and shield traffic. Okay?”

“Of course, Am.”

Casper much preferred disappearing to arguing. If guests were disappointed with their room assignment, he always sent out
the reservations manager. If anyone wanted an adjustment on their rate, he invariably deferred to another manager. Staff meetings
for Casper were Quaker meetings. Kendrick never got anything more out of him than everything was going “fine, just fine.”
Maybe that’s why Kendrick liked him.

If anything, Casper was predictable. At least he was, up until last night. He had surprised Am by showing up at the party.
Casper lived with an invalid aunt and rarely associated with any other employees outside of work. Now who had Roger come as?
Am thought for a moment but couldn’t remember. He turned to ask him, but Casper was already gone.

Tim Kelly’s bill was still flashing on the computer screen when Am returned to his office. He did a printout, then methodically
went through all the charges. There didn’t seem to be anything extraordinary about Kelly’s account. Maybe that’s what didn’t
feel right to Am. It all seemed too normal—the long-distance calls, the greens fees, the restaurant tabs, even the bar bill.
Am would have expected him to have gone out with more of a splash.

Sometimes you get a feel for guests through their hotel bills, but two days of charges didn’t tell Am all that much about
Tim Kelly. Besides, sometimes hotel bills deceived more than enlightened. When people escaped from their routines, they frequently
allowed themselves freedoms they wouldn’t indulge in on their home turf. They watched an adult film, or drank too much, or
took a nocturnal swim without clothes. “Guests,” said one of Am’s former GMs, “act like Mormons out of town.” Not that religion
had anything to do with it. Just human nature.

Tiring of looking at the bill, Am accessed the guest history data base and entered Kelly’s name. This visit hadn’t been Kelly’s
first. He had stayed at the Hotel the two previous years, both times with the Contractors Association annual convention. Curious,
Am called up the group history. Hotels were getting to the point where they could almost crank out their own TRW credit reports.
At the Hotel, group expenditures were tracked more faithfully than baseball scouts analyzing batting averages, and group bookings
were prioritized by their spending habits. The Contractors Association was evidently “A” team material. They liked to spend
money.

Let me count the ways, thought Am. He scrolled through the file, paying close attention to both individual and group requests.
Everything was documented, from room setups to banquet menus. High rollers are catered to, and the guest rooming assignments
had been prepared carefully rather than slotted in the usual block of rooms. As a repeat group, many of the conventioneers
had known what they wanted and hadn’t been shy about making those desires known. The usual litany of requests were indicated,
from bed size to location to type of accommodation, with the usual petitions for everything from feather pillows to special
lighting. Kelly hadn’t been among those with requests.

Had he known he was going to commit suicide when he’d checked in? Am started speculating, then chastised himself mentally.
It was a moot point, not to mention a waste of time. Maybe Kendrick was right, as much as that possibility hurt him. Maybe
he could best serve the dead by “ah-sisting” to the bereaved, sending those all-important fruit baskets. Condolence calls
on behalf of the Hotel were also in order. Sighing, Am assembled a list of people who should be contacted. John Leonard, the
Contractors Association group leader, was his first call.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Leonard,” said Am. “My name’s Am Caulfield and I’m the assistant general manager here. On behalf
of the Hotel, I’m calling to express our deepest sympathies.”

Am’s attempt at sorrowful sorries didn’t get very far. “I really didn’t know Tim very well,” Leonard said.

And by the tone of his voice, Am didn’t think Leonard was going to be starting a retrospective any time soon.

“Well,” said Am, “might the Hotel be of any assistance to your group at this difficult time?”

Leonard thought a few moments before answering. To Am, that wasn’t a good sign. “Steve Daniels is the one you should talk
to,” he finally said. “Steve’s in five twenty-two. He was a friend of Tim’s, so he’s pretty much handling everything.”

Daniels’s line was busy, which was excuse enough for Am to walk up to his room. A small man who looked like a depressed version
of Harpo Marx answered his knock. Am barely got the chance to utter a few platitudes before the guest swept him into his room.
Maybe it was the face-to-face, or maybe Daniels just needed someone to talk to. “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “Tim’s
the last guy I would have figured for this.”

Am sat down on the sofa and let Daniels talk. He heard that Kelly had walked out on a good life. The deceased had run a successful
development company in Menlo Park and had a family he adored. Daniels had known him for almost ten years, and this was the
third consecutive year they had attended the convention together. It was an excuse for them to play golf and drink, the best
tax write-off either of them could think of.

Tim was forty-four years old, Daniels said, and he’d left behind a wife and two small children. Phyllis Kelly was understandably
very upset. She couldn’t accept that her husband had committed suicide. Self-murder went against their faith, was a sin.

Mrs. Kelly was too distraught to fly down, he said. In her absence she had authorized Daniels to take charge of all her husband’s
possessions. The police had released them with alacrity, no doubt grateful to free themselves from dealing with the logistics
of a long-distance death.

“You want a drink?” asked Daniels.

Am shook his head.

“Guess it is a little early,” Daniels said. It wasn’t even nine o’clock.

“Tim insisted upon buying the drinks last night,” he said mournfully. “I wish I had bought him his last drinks.”