Body Blows (6 page)

“Working for Mr. Gritchfield?”

“No. He'd be working for you.”

Gritch had spent much of his working life sitting between a fern and a palm tree in the lobby of the Lord Douglas, from which observation post he surveyed every entry and departure. He was a married man, but his wife maintained that he was a bigamist and that his first wife was the hotel.

In the old days Gritch would lift whatever newspaper he was hiding behind to sip from a flask but when we first teamed up he told me he was on the wagon.

“I've been sober for three years,” Gritch told me. “Three years, three months, and one, two, three days, hey, no, it's after midnight, four days.”

“Congratulations,” I say.

“No mean feat,” he says. “I was never a binge drinker. I was a steady, well-schooled, dedicated souse, ambulatory and capable of coherent discourse. I was a pro.”

“What made you stop?”

“Oh, you know, wife.”

“Oh.”

“She said there were three things in my life: the hotel, the booze, and her. She said I was going to have to drop one of them.”

Louis Schurr retired a few months later, died a few months after that, and I started work at a job I wasn't particularly well-suited for, running a small staff of less-than-stalwart operatives. Nonetheless, I managed to make a go of it, predominantly because of Wallace Gritchfield.

That was eight years ago.

“How many special keys are there anyway?” Gritch wants to know. “Keys that will get you up to the penthouse?”

My expensive cigar suddenly tastes foul. Extravagance is an acquired habit. Gritch seems able to deal with it.

“One in Lloyd's office. We've got one.”

“You carry that one all the time. Is there another one in this office?”

I shake my head. “Maurice has one I think.”

“Nope. Maurice has to get the one from Lloyd's office.”

“Got to be more than two, right?” I say. “Leo has one. And Raquel. She must've had one.”

That brings a moment of silence.

“Housekeeping,” I say. “Mrs. Dineen.”

“Yeah. Her too,” Gritch says. “And there's the fire door.”

“Someone went out that way,” I say. “Why didn't the bells start ringing?”

“Maybe they knew the security code.”

Right, I'm thinking — keys, security codes, but no cameras.

“Should have had cameras up there,” I say. “The place just got outfitted with security cameras on every floor. Why didn't Leo install them up there?”

“Privacy,” says Gritch. “He's a bear for his privacy.”

chapter six

F
irst thing in the morning, before toast and coffee, I check in with Lloyd Gruber and Margo Traynor, manager and assistant manager respectively, in Margo's office (Lloyd doesn't like me in his office, he worries that I'll break something). Their reactions are predictable. Margo says, “Oh, my God, that poor woman. Is Leo all right?” And Lloyd says, “Christ, the papers will have a field day!”

He can put his worries on hold for a few hours at least. The morning papers haven't yet picked up the story. I have a look at the
Emblem
in the Lobby Café while Hattie butters my toast.

“It's true, Joe?” She doesn't want to believe it. “Raquel?”

“Yes.”

“I can't believe it,” she says. “Such a nice person.”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“The police don't know, I don't know, Leo doesn't know. It looks like someone broke in somehow.”

“Up
there
? How?”

“That's what they're trying to find out.”

“Who would do a thing like that? Such a nice person,” Hattie says. “She gave me a Christmas card last year. She said Mr. Alexander always spoke well of my mother.”

“Yes, she was very thoughtful,” I say. I've just remembered that Raquel wanted me to pick up something for her. Where's the receipt? Still in the pocket of my tux, likely. Leo's not going to feel much like celebrating a birthday tomorrow, but I suppose I'd better attend to it anyway. I promised.

“Is there going to be a funeral?”

“I'll let you know, Hattie,” I say. “The police haven't released the body yet.”

“Oh, the poor dear,” she says. “Such a sweet person.”

The uniformed cop who lets me into Leo's closet is impressed with the array. For someone who never went out, Leo has a long clothes rack. I follow Manny Bigalow's old-school rules. “No cufflinks until evening …” White shirt, charcoal grey suit, striped tie. “Always appropriate …” Plenty to choose from — black shoes, dark grey socks. I get the socks and fresh underwear from one of the dressers in his bedroom. I've never been in here before. King-size bed faces a big-screen television, reading material on both side tables, an ashtray on the left side, a Martha Stewart magazine on the right. Leo's linen is perfectly sorted and aligned in the dresser drawers. I can sense Raquel's careful attention to detail. And something more. She smoothed these stacks of laundry with her hands before she closed the drawer. I can feel it.

The policeman lets me stare into the living room for a few seconds before he gets twitchy about my presence. The French doors are smashed. Possible point of entry. But from where? The floor below? I'll need to get out on the terrace to see if it's possible, but that isn't going to happen on this trip.

“Sorry, sir. The Crime Scene Unit will be up here pretty soon. They want everything the way they left it.”

“Sure, I understand,” I say.

Dark sky, no sunrise, rain starting to fall. The air is unnaturally warm and humid. Leo stares through the windshield, doesn't say a word, his mood as dreary as the clouds moving in across the water. When he gets out of the car I give him my arm. He has no strength this morning.

“Did you get anything to eat, sir?”

“My stomach's in a knot,” he says.

That makes two of us.

Mooney and Pazzano tag-team the interviewing sessions, me in one room and Leo in another. Pazzano drops in to start things off.

“How long you been working for Leo Alexander?”

“Eight years.”

He's shorter than I am, broad in the shoulders, heavy-browed. He shuffles around the room restlessly. I get the feeling he wants to show me he can take care of himself. “How'd he come to hire you?” he asks.

“I was available.”

“As his full-time bodyguard?”

“Supposed to be for a week or so.

“Then you took a couple of bullets for him.”

“Not on purpose.”

“That's pretty loyal for a guy on a short-term contract,” he says. “I guess he felt he owed you something, giving you a job, place to live, good salary.”

Mooney comes in and they play it together for a while. Mooney sits across from me, hands folded on the table. Pazzano stays on point.

“Pretty much locked himself up there for eight years, right?”

“You could say that.”

“Like he was afraid whoever took the shots might come back to do it right.”

“You'd have to ask Leo,” I say. “He's a private man. He never told me what he was thinking.”

“Or who to watch out for?”

“Nope.”

“Or why someone might hate him that much?”

“Nope.”

“Makes your job a lot harder, doesn't it?”

“These days my job is hotel security.”

Mooney finally speaks up. “Except last night,” he says. “Last night you were back to being a bodyguard.”

The two of them pay Leo a visit and I sit by myself for a while, writing up a statement. I don't much like being in a police station; you're never there because you want to be; you're either suspected of something, or a witness to something, or waiting for the cops to be finished with someone you know. Any minute I'm expecting them to start asking about the ruined plaque, or the switched drivers. I haven't written those details down and I won't bring them up until they do. Withholding information of this kind probably isn't covered by any recognized confidentiality privilege and at some point no doubt I'll pay for it, but right now my concern is strictly for my boss. I haven't told him about the plaque either.

Mooney comes back to resume our conversation.

“Castle in the sky, right?” Mooney says. “Any ideas how the guy got in?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Detective.”

“I figure he must've had an elevator key. Don't you?”

“Could be.”

“Unless she let him in herself.”

“That's another possibility.”

“Which means she would have known him.”

“Or her.”

“Yeah, right, or her, or
them
.”

They trade off. Mooney goes back to Leo, Pazzano steps into the room. He looks like he's run out of questions. He waggles his head a couple of times as if to loosen his thick neck.

“We've got some fighters on the force,” he says. “Boxing club.”

“You part of that?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What do you fight at,” I ask sociably. “One-ninety-five?”

“Ninety-nine,” he says. “You?”

“Fighting weight was two fifteen,” I say. “I'm up about five, give or take.”

He's looking me up and down, wondering. He's about ten years younger, belongs to a boxing club, works out regularly. Only natural for him to speculate.

“You should maybe come down sometime, put the gloves on, give us a free lesson.” He rolls his shoulders. “Weed says you used to be pretty good.”

“Quit before I lost too many brain cells,” I say.

“You ever meet this Vivienne Griese before?”

“Saunders. She said she was going back to her maiden name. And no, I'd never met her before.” I've just remembered something. “Her husband was around last night. Outside the hotel. Drunk. Angry.”

“Hey now. Pissed-off husbands go to the top of the list,” Pazzano says. “'Course, in your boss's case that would make for a long list.”

“I wouldn't know, Detective.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Word is your boss had lots of lady friends. Three wives, at least. Who knows how many mistresses, or unsatisfied wives, or hotel maids for that matter.” He pretends to smile. “I hear you were pretty friendly with the deceased yourself. She was giving you Spanish lessons.”

“Mostly correcting my pronunciation.”

“Teach you any new words?”

“Sure.”

“Such as?”

“Let's see,
Puede usted donde el aeropuerto?
”

“What's that?”

“Can you tell me where the airport is?”

He likes that. “Were you two planning a trip?” He glides back in my direction. “You ever see her outside the hotel?”

“You mean socially?”

And now he's in my face. “I mean any way at all, in the kitchen, down in your room. Private lessons so to speak.” He smiles a nasty smile. I repress the urge to wipe it off his face. “Anything going on between you and Miss Chimi Changa?”

My turn to smile. “Once fought a guy from East L.A.,” I say. “Now
he
was a trash talker. He'd say just about anything to make you lose your temper, nasty remarks about your girlfriends, always mentioned the size of his penis. I never understood that.”

He nods his head. “You should really come down sometime. Put on the gloves, just for a ‘friendly.'”

“I never thought of it as recreation, Detective. It was my job.”

The door opens. Mooney pokes his head in. “You signed that statement?”

“Barring any spelling mistakes, it's as accurate as I can make it,” I say. I avoid adding that it's somewhat incomplete.

“Got that motorcycle business in there?”

“Makes for one short paragraph,” I say. “You find out the name of the guy who fell?”

Mooney declines to answer. Typical cop. “We'll be talking to your boss for a while longer,” he says. “You can wait out there.”

When I stand up, Pazzano braces me for a moment. I can see that he's considering things.

“Nice to see you two getting along so well,” says Mooney.

I say, “Detective Pazzano was just inviting me down to the Police Boxing Club.”

“Some tough guys down there, Grundy,” Mooney says with a grin.

“I'm sure there are. Wouldn't have to fight them all, would I?”

“Just the toughest one,” he says.

“And who would that be?”

“That would be me,” says Pazzano.

“Figured,” I say.

A familiar face is coming into the detective's room. Sergeant of Detectives Norman Quincy Weed is wearing his finest green suit. It must be getting close to St. Patrick's Day. He's wearing a brown tie and brown shoes. He looks like a hedge. Norman has his own sense of style.

The detective's room has a new Bunn-O-Matic. They're very proud of it. It grinds fresh beans every time.

“Did you get a coffee?”

“I could use another one,” I say. “I didn't get a lot of sleep.”

Weed sips, makes a face. He misses the old hotplate. “You want stuff in that?” He offers me a sugar packet.

“Just the caffeine,” I say. The coffee tastes fine to me.

He checks out the bruise on my jawbone. “You been brawling again?”

“Chasing shadows,” I say. “One of them tried to run me over.”

“Where's your boss?” he asks.

“Interview room. It's hit him pretty hard.”

“Un hunh,” he says. He doesn't sound too sympathetic. “They were close, weren't they?”

“I think he was closer to her than anyone in his world.”

“Got any ideas?” he asks.

“Not a clue. It looked like a break-in, all the damage. She was a fighter. She probably threw one of them over the side.”

“Anything stolen?”