McGrave's Hotel (2 page)

She hurried the cards back into a pile. She was clearly disturbed at having revealed such a dark indicator.

“Death?” James said. “Don’t worry about it, Miss Charles. Haven’t you noticed? Death pretty much turns up here every night. This is McGrave’s.”

For McGrave’s was indeed unlike any other hotel in Gotham.

“It would be like living in a Saturday matinee horror movie,” the man from the government had said. “Quite fun, I should think.” Almost a year ago, the man had arrived in London, on Christmas morning with Bing Crosby singing on the radio, with the news that James’s parents had died. It was also his responsibility to place the boy, and although he could have sent James to an orphan asylum or a foster home or a boarding school, he instead suggested a job and a home at McGrave’s. As the man explained, he knew that James had spent most of his life in hotels, that James would feel at home in one, and that James and McGrave’s would be a perfect fit.

Gargoyles, carved from Indiana limestone into creatures with terrifying faces, circled the building’s rooftop and kept an eye on the humans far below. Lots of buildings in the city harbored families of gargoyles, but only McGrave’s, if one believed the photographic evidence, harbored gargoyles that perched in different locations on different nights.

Exactly how high did these creatures loom? James should have known, because he occasionally gave guided tours, but this was hard to say. No one knew exactly how many stories the hotel encompassed. Forty-seven floors was the popular estimate, but the count was confused because the elevators occasionally stopped at phantom floors. The doors would glide open to reveal mist-filled corridors. Human-scale shapes could be seen drifting from room to room in the gloom, but no one investigated to determine if the shapes were mortal or even human. From time to time, someone stepped off the elevator at these floors, but no one ever stepped back on. The next time the elevator stopped, that floor might simply not be there at all.

There was also the issue of how many cellars, basements, and sub-basements the building housed. All that could be said was that guests could descend
very
deep into the earth, to realms best not visited. Visitors and staff swore that something in the wine cellar moaned constantly. Old timers claimed it was the ghost of the English explorer Henry Hudson, one of the first postmortals to gravitate to McGrave’s after the hotel was erected. According to hotel lore, the famous explorer haunted the wine cellar so he could drink there, to console himself over his death at the hands of mutineers. Whatever the reason, the staff was proud that a celebrity ghost, an important historical figure, might choose McGrave’s as its final resting place.

Of the solid, physical floors, those that could be relied upon to be there on a return visit, room accommodations varied greatly. Some rooms had bars on the windows; others had cages inside the rooms proper. Some had vaulted ceilings that permitted bats to circle in the high shadows; others were as small and cramped as the inside of a mausoleum. Some had spacious beds for those who used such items; others had satin-lined oblong boxes that closed.

Locating the hotel in the city was easy. All one had to do was look for the dark cloud that hovered above the building daily. A hundred feet above the high-strung gargoyles, it roosted in the sky like a perpetual harbinger of gloom. Meteorologists debated the atmospherics that could cause such a localized phenomenon, and a few felt it had more to do with magic than science. All they could agree on was to label it
cumulonimbus
, meaning a dark fluffy cloud that was always about to rain. Once in a while, the cloud crackled with lightning to remind passersby of its presence.

This was one of those times. As Miss Charles scooped her cards back into her box, James heard the cloud’s distinctive rumbling and hoped it didn’t portend that trouble was brewing up there. Trouble visited McGrave’s too often.

The Guest List

James bid adieux to Miss Charles and walked toward the lobby, unconcerned by thoughts of Justice, Romance, and Death. It was time for him to report for duty, and he looked forward to the night ahead.

The fastest route from Reservations to the Grand Lobby was to take the shortcut through the Pearly Gates Gallery. This ritzy shopping corridor featured a hotel gift shop called Last Wishes, a luggage emporium called You Can Take It With You, and a bridal boutique called Beyond the Veil. As he passed the boutique, James paused to look himself over in a full-length mirror. Pleased with what he saw, he felt certain he would pass Mr. Nash’s evening’s inspection. The mannequin brides in Beyond the Veil’s window favored him with painted smiles as he adjusted the small flat cap on his head, tilting it to just shy of rakish.

When James first came to McGrave’s, there were no bellhop uniforms his size, so his had to be specially tailored. The shiny buttons that gleamed against the front of his dark green jacket and the crisp black stripes running down his trousers and around his jacket cuffs gave the outfit an almost military look. He could imagine himself in a military uniform if he were older and if the war everyone was talking about actually started up.
That
battle would be for another time. Tonight’s battle, as always, was to provide first-rate service to the hotel’s guests. On some nights, that simply meant keeping them alive. On many nights, it meant bringing all of James’s special skills into play.

The six bellhops on night duty stood at attention at the circular Front Desk in the Grand Lobby. In addition to James, there were, in descending order by height: Roderick, Spats, Joey, Mick, and Duke. Although James was a full head shorter and considerably younger than the others, he was pleased to be a valuable member of the McGrave’s staff. He couldn’t carry as much luggage as the older boys, but he quickly learned to compensate by piling baggage on a wheeled cart he had found in the basement, where the coffins were stacked.

“Hands,” commanded Mr. Nash. Mr. Nash was thirty-five, an Illinois boy educated overseas at Trinity College, Oxford, where he had created a bit of an academic stir with his thesis on Victorian ghost stories. His dark hair had begun to turn to gray over his ears, for it wasn’t easy being the night manager at McGrave’s, where the ghost stories were more a nightly state of affairs than the stuff of literary imagining. He wore a dark blue suit with a white carnation in the buttonhole of his lapel.

At once, the boys extended their hands, palms down, fingers straight. Sixty clean fingers passed muster; fingernails sparkled. On cue, the boys then flipped their hands palms up. Clean hands were expected at McGrave’s.

Mr. Nash passed out the assignments and sent most of the boys to their stations. James lingered behind a bit, as he often did.

“Sorry, Jim, boy, no one has asked for you today.”

James appreciated that every staff member knew he was longing for a message from his parents. James knew full well that they were dead, of course, but he hoped they had left a message behind. It must have gone astray.

Tonight, however, something was amiss. James didn’t like the look on Mr. Nash’s face. Mr. Nash’s eyes twitched, his neck muscles looked tense, and tiny beads of sweat collected on his temples. This was unusual, as Mr. Nash was always in command at McGrave’s.

“Is everything all right?” James said. “You look worried, sir.”

“Do I? Sorry, most unprofessional. Unbecoming for an Oxford man. I shall try to better conceal my feelings. It’s that, ah, we’ve had a call. We could be receiving a special guest later this evening. A VIP, to be sure.”

VIPs at McGrave’s were tricky. As at most hotels, they expected the best suites, tiptop service, and world-class flattery. Unlike what was expected at most hotels, some of their requests bordered on the extreme. A bellhop didn’t mind being a late-night servant, but he didn’t want to be a late-night snack.

“Who, sir?”

“Oh, ah, never you mind, Jim. Never you mind.
He
is often expected in many places, so he may not turn up at all. No point in worrying you by mentioning his name. Now, off you go, lad. We’ve plenty of our usual run of guests to entertain us. We’re still awaiting a Broadway celebrity, a contingent of foreigners, and a pair of newlyweds. As always, make old Mr. McGrave proud. I know you will.”

The Grand Lobby soared four stories from the marble lobby floor to the frescoed ceiling with its paintings of brooding storm clouds. Its most prominent feature was the gigantic framed painting of Thaddeus McGrave himself. Standing hands on hips, Mr. McGrave glared down at his patrons and staff, and all who looked up at the painting would swear the eyes followed them as they moved about. It was said that, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Thaddeus McGrave owned half the cemeteries and a third of the funeral homes in the Northeast. He had learned early on that there was money to be made from death, and it therefore came as no surprise that he would erect a hotel that was bedfellows with death.

As James studied the painting, he guessed that not all was well with Thaddeus McGrave. From his vantage point in his gilded frame, opposite the grand clock that ticked off the hours in giant golden Roman numerals, Mr. McGrave no doubt did not like what he was seeing and hearing. The talk of an overseas war weighed on everyone’s mood. According to Mr. Nash, Mr. McGrave always felt that death in moderation was a bit of a good thing. It gave a place an edge, a subtext, something to discuss over an evening’s glass of wine, or a reason to keep one eye open during a night’s stay at a chancy hotel. Mr. Nash pointed to the eighteen-foot-tall Christmas tree in the lobby, with glass ornaments shaped like grinning human skulls, as quite the right touch. On the other hand, James realized, death on the scale of war took the fun out of it. It rankled the staff. As James well knew, Chef Anatole, the hotel’s celebrated master cook, couldn’t bear the thought of foreign boots tramping into his beloved Paris, and it showed in his recently uninspired dishes. Maurice, the night waiter, hailed from Austria and didn’t mind if you were displeased with your filet mignon or a little light on your tip, but he gave customers the stink eye if they were German. Mr. Nash worried about bombs falling on his old college in England, and that in turn worried Miss Charles to see him so distracted. As to Miss Charles herself, her fingers were getting chafed from constantly shuffling and re-dealing her tarot cards, but it was to no avail. The cards simply refused to say anything good about Europe. Far above, according to staff whispers, even the gargoyles were getting more fidgety than usual.

James’s own thoughts on Germany were far from indifferent. When the man from the government came to confirm what James already knew, that his parents were dead, the man explained:

“It was all about German war plans,” he said. “In March, they started rebuilding their air force at an alarming rate. Incredible numbers. They will need pilots for all those planes, and your parents stumbled onto a special school where young boys are being trained. Your parents tried to get photographs of the school, but we don’t know what happened after that. Their radio broadcast was interrupted.

“They were posing as tourists, and it should have been easy for them to get in and out. In the end, we think they were betrayed. The innkeeper where they stayed worked for the Nazis. I’m sorry, James. We are all truly sorry.”

“Did they leave a message?” James said, refusing to cry. “Something before the last broadcast?”

James knew it was standard spy craft procedure to use a dead drop or dead letter box. They could have left a message in advance. They would have. They would have left one for him.

Yet the man knew of no message, and none had surfaced in nearly a year since James’s parents had perished.

James blinked away the memory as best he could, gave the painting of Mr. McGrave a friendly parting glance, and turned to take measure of who was in the facility this evening. It was time to get to work.

James began each evening’s shift by surveying the goings on in the Boneyard Club, the hotel’s world renowned supper club, dinners served twenty-four hours, French cuisine a specialty, reservations recommended but not required, music for dining and dancing from nine to three, fortunes told tableside upon request. Tables adorned with black tablecloths, sparkling wineglasses, and fresh-cut blood-red roses rimmed the wooden dance floor. Additional bands of tables spread out in concentric rings from the closest, each tiered a little higher so all the diners had a clear view of the dancing. At the entrance, a pair of life-size skeletons pointed the way to the seating and helped establish the theme. For the current Christmas season, the skeletons looked festive in black top hats and red bow ties.

Miss Charles provided the soothsaying while the hotel’s talented Negro piano man, Count Otis Monroe, provided the music along with his group, the Transylvania Five. They said there was voodoo in Count Otis’s fingers, for his music seemed to cast a hypnotic spell over the audience. He could make them dance to “Moonglow” and “Red Sails in the Sunset,” he could make them fall in love to “The Way You Look Tonight,” and he could make them cry to “Lullaby of Broadway.” It was magic, and the boast was that few would go home remembering any details of the evening.