Made to Kill (11 page)

Which meant he wasn’t dead. Injured, and badly by the sound of it, but not dead.

That was a problem. It meant that we hadn’t fulfilled the contract. If news of Rockwell’s survival got back to the original client, chances were they’d want their money back. Chances are they would want far more than just money. And if Rockwell was still alive, he might remember me and my little late-night visit. Our little enterprise risked exposure.

Except it had been three years. We hadn’t had any trouble, according to Ada. Everyone thought Rockwell was dead. Still dead. Which meant his current state of health was a secret. Which meant we were still in the clear.

For now.

And then on top of this, the new job from the new client. One that seemed to intersect the first in a way that neither Ada nor I much liked.

I was to kill Eva McLuckie.

Now, this was hinky and we knew it. A little care was required here. Sure, I could have found Eva and punched her ticket, but the way the two jobs tangled was by no means coincidental. Couldn’t have been. Throw in Chip Rockwell and things weren’t just tangled, it was a
bone fide
Gordian Knot.

So while Ada tried to go back to our new client for some more information, I headed out to the Ritz-Beverly Hotel. Just for a look, nothing more. If Eva was there, I wasn’t going to kill her. She was supposed to be calling the office for a daily update and I could give it to her in person and then ask for an update of my own.

So I took the scenic route. I had a hunch that someone had seen Eva come to the office yesterday, which meant she was being watched. Then Ada reminded me of the mystery man on the road above the Hollywood Sign and I had to concede the fact that maybe I was being watched too.

At least I was careful with the man from the Parks Department. Nobody had seen that.

Whether I was paranoid or not didn’t seem to make much of a difference, because for most of the way to the hotel I was in fact being followed by a gold coupe with a white roof that looked like you could pull it back if it was a nice day.

But it was nice day now and the top was up. There was only one person in the car, and while he was making some kind of effort not to be seen, it wasn’t working.

I figured I could deal with that problem with the time came and eventually I turned past the sign that said
The Ritz-Beverly Hotel
in a flowing script that looked like handwriting.

The hotel was a pink construction peeking out from behind rows of phoenix palms and another kind of palm with a narrow tall trunk that I didn’t remember the name of. The hotel was set well in grounds that were both capacious and sun-kissed. I reached the start of its driveway around ten in the morning and I was looking for lunch around the time I pulled into the guest parking lot. A sign told me valet parking was available at two bucks a day. I decided to do Ada a favor and use the free option so I parked the car in the shade of a palm to hide the paintwork. The building in front of me was pink and had curves and arches and three turrets that looked like Venetian bell towers. There were three flags fluttering against the blue sky, one per turret, the Stars and Stripes in the middle, flanked by the banner of the California Republic on either side. The windows, of which there were more than a few, had white frames and verandas with possibilities.

The place looked like an expensive kind of wedding cake, one that looked good in pictures but probably not so much up close.

I stood by the car in the shade of the palm tree and straightened my tie and my hat and I tried to look like the kind of private detective who might be called to such an establishment by an exiled dowager duchess who had lost the family jewels in the top penthouse suite.

I walked toward the hotel and then I turned under the shade of the next palm tree along and watched the parking lot, but the gold coupe that had been following me all the way from Franklin didn’t make an appearance. The tail—if he was a tail—wasn’t
that
bad. But as I stood there a couple of cars cruised past the end of the driveway and kept on going. One of them could have been gold.

.I was met at the hotel entrance by a phalanx of doormen in top hats and tails. Each of them smiled tightly and the oldest number opened a large gold and glass door for me. I doffed my hat and he did the same. I saw a red line around his forehead and his thin hair was damp.

Hell of a day to be wearing a get up like that.

The hotel lobby switched the pink for a yellowish cream. It was a better color in my book, except for the fact that it seemed to stick to everything like glossy pancake batter. The floor was yellowish cream marble. The marble pillars were the same. There were two desks about a mile away from me on either side. Between me and them was an obstacle course of sofas and easy chairs and side tables. The sofas and chairs were a yellowish cream and had enough padding to lose a small child in. The tables, made of a dark wood with an admirable grain, were mostly covered with yellowish cream tablecloths to hide their shame.

There was a piano in a sort of conservatory annex on my far left. The piano at least was black but the complexion of the man playing it matched the floor.

“May I help you, sir?”

An employee in a uniform that was too tight and a hat that was small and round appeared to my right. He had his hands clasped in front of him like a groom waiting at the altar for his bride, and when I looked at him he jerked his head up like he wanted to get that cap off real bad but regulations didn’t allow him to touch it with his hands.

He smiled at me tightly so I returned the look. On the inside, anyway.

“I’ve got an appointment,” I said. This was not strictly true.

“Yes, sir?” he said. What he really meant was “Yeah, me and my mother too.” He jerked his head back again. I was afraid he would give himself whiplash. “I’m sure reception can make a call to your party.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said. “Private appointment. Fourth floor.”

“Sir?”

“It’s okay, I’m expected. McLuckie, room four-oh-seven. He’s an army buddy.”

The bellhop—I think he was a bellhop, hat like that, uniform with enough scrambled egg falling off the shoulder for the wearer to hold high rank in the army of a small tropical dictatorship—nodded but didn’t offer any further argument, unless I was supposed to take some other meaning from the tight smile he turned on again.

I nodded at the elevators on the other side of the reception desks and he nodded back to me.

He didn’t try to stop me as I walked over to the elevators and pressed the button. Before I stepped into the car I gave him a little wave.

He didn’t wave back.

My destination was room four-oh-seven and the fourth floor seemed like a good bet. I cruised the corridor on carpet thick enough for a space capsule to make a splash down on and spent some time appreciating the décor, which now featured some gilt in addition to the sickly cream. It looked like a lot of work and with good light from the big windows I had to admit it was pretty classy.

I glanced out said windows. I’d come around to the front of the hotel and I could see my car under my palm and all the other cars in the lot. Finally there was some life too, as a man and a woman with arms linked walked toward a convertible then unlinked arms as they went around opposite sides and got in. A moment later the engine turned over and they were chewing expensive white gravel all the way back to the street.

Then I turned back to the other cars in the lot, in particular my favorite gold coupe with the white roof, which had materialized in the sunshine opposite my car. Could have been a coincidence. It was a nice car. It was the kind of car that would be parked at a place like this, although I would have picked it to be one for valet, even at two bucks a day. The car was empty. I zoomed in to have a quick look. The angle I was at meant I couldn’t see the driver’s side too well but I got a clean look at the passenger side. There was a newspaper sitting on red leather, both baking in the sun. I read half a headline about a movie premiere then zoomed back out and continued sliding silently down the corridor.

Soon enough the corridor windows disappeared as I headed deeper into the hotel and the chandeliers took over the job of lighting. They were nice too, crystal, not too big. Elegant. I decided that I liked the way this hotel did things and I wondered what one of these elegant crystal chandeliers would look like in the office.

Four-oh-seven was, by my count, just around the corner. I kept on traveling.

Around the corner might have been four-oh-seven but the first thing I came to was a cleaning cart. It looked just as greasy and dirty as in any other hotel. There was a steel bucket and a mop and I counted four colored cloths hanging on a rail. Up top there were plastic squeeze bottles sitting in a tray.

Even though I was a machine, Professor Thornton had thought of everything because my nose was pretty sharp and the whole ensemble in the corridor in front of me smelled like a swimming pool and the lady in the blue smock who came out of the open door of room four-oh-four just next to the cart smelled like a can of furniture polish. It wasn’t an unpleasant aroma.

She had black hair under a net and bags under her eyes, and her arms had a slackness in the upper portion that spoke of a certain age. As she backed out of the room she saw me and gave a little bow then turned her eyes to the floor.

“Sir,” she said and she waited. I was clearly supposed to be doing something. I watched her for a moment. He lips twitched like she wanted a cigarette, and she twisted an orange cloth in one hand like a rosary.

When I didn’t move she looked up and then her eyes went wide. Whether it was because I hadn’t taken my hat off indoors or because underneath that hat was a face made of bronzed steel I wasn’t sure. I put a bet on the latter. The orange cloth between her hands got so tight I thought it would make a pretty good garrote should she ever consider another line of work.

I lifted my hat to see if that helped and it did, because it made the cleaner smile. It was still a nervous smile but I was starting to get somewhere.

“Do you clean all the rooms on this floor?” I asked. It wasn’t much of an introduction but I decided to skip formalities and get to business.

“Ah… yes, sir, I do,” said the cleaner in a clear deep voice with a heavy accent. “Myself and Maria, sir, we clean four and three. I’m sorry sir but… do you need me to get you something?”

Her eyes narrowed. Her suspicions about robotkind had returned. I should have kept walking.
      

We were one step away from her placing a call to the front desk saying there was a strange robot wandering around upstairs, so I reached inside my coat and pulled out my wallet. I opened it and showed it to her and held my hand there a while so she could get a good look. Her eyes crawled over the badge, reading every letter and every number.

Then her eyes moved up to my optics.

“
You’re
a private detective?” she asked, like a guy made of metal couldn’t hold down a good job.

“I am,” I said in a low voice. I turned my shoulder and looked back down the empty passageway and then I bent down like I was letting her in on a secret. She seemed to get the drift, checking over her own shoulder before taking a step closer and ducking in for a conference.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said.

The cleaner checked over her shoulder again. We were alone, swathed in cream woodwork with gilt edging and slowly sinking by the fathom into the carpet.

I pointed ahead with my shoulder. “Room four-oh-seven. You know who’s in there?”

Then the cleaner stood tall and she bit her lip and looked back over her shoulder for the third time. She was considering something, but she wasn’t sure of it.

I decided to get the jump on what she was thinking. I reached into my other pocket and pulled out my other wallet, the one I liked to keep paper money in. I opened it nice and wide and the cleaner got a good look at the contents. I picked out a one-dollar bill with two steel fingers.

“Room four-oh-seven,” I said again.

“Four-oh-seven?” said the cleaner, still looking in my wallet. Her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth and she lifted herself up onto her toes like a kid trying to see what secrets were at the bottom of the candy barrel. I lifted the dollar bill and folded it in one movement. I thought that was pretty smooth but she wasn’t watching. Instead she pointed into my wallet. “Is that a two-dollar bill?”

My wallet was filled with ones and fives and tens. There might even have been a twenty or two at the back. But at the front, revealed by the buck I’d already pulled out, was a two-dollar bill. I hadn’t noticed I was carrying it. Nobody liked the damn things, even though they were perfectly legal. I’d once heard of a guy who collected them and when he collected enough he stuck them all together and put them in a frame worth more than the money on display inside of it.

Maybe that guy was Thornton.

The cleaner’s eyes were wide and glittering like a fortune teller leaning over her crystal ball. So why not? I moved the wallet closer to her and she plucked the two-dollar bill with a finger and thumb, bringing it out slowly and carefully like the sides of my wallet were electrified.

Two bucks. I could have got the car valeted for that.

“Four-oh-seven?” I asked again, my eyes on hers and her eyes on her prize. She stretched the two-dollar bill and turned it this way and that to make sure it was real.

“Four-oh-seven is the honeymoon suite,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

“But,” she said, and then she dropped her hands and her eyes went narrow again and she dropped her volume to a whisper. Somehow that made her accent thicker and when she spoke I feared for the wellbeing of her tongue.

“But,” she said, “I do not know what is going on in there.” She checked over her shoulder, but there was nothing but thick carpet waving in the breeze like wheat in a field. “The room, it has been
ocupado
for, oh, I don’t know. A long, long time. Maybe three months.”