The Hotel Detective (22 page)

For Am, the worst part of the news was having to watch himself being interviewed. He thought he had the presence of a cornered
fox in a room of baying hounds. The only good thing about his segment was that it was short. Maybe his unintelligible mumbling
had something to do with that. Am was glad he had listened to the housekeeper’s suggestion of filling the room with flowers.
He had sarcastically asked if she wanted to make it look even more like a funeral parlor, but Barb had countered that the
viewers might notice the pretty arrangements more than the story being presented. She had artfully positioned the flowers
in front of the dais so as to obscure the Hotel California display (usually burnished to a high polish whenever the media
was around). Barb’s flowers had shown up beautifully.

Murders and festive flowers made for conflicting signals. The day had been full of those. Things are not always as they seem,
thought Am, words he associated with Conrad, an elderly bellman who had worked at his last hotel. Ninety-nine times out of
one hundred, Conrad said, he could gauge his tip to within a dollar of what he would ultimately receive, but every so often
he encountered a guest who fooled him, who offered him a hauteur and a smile that all but guaranteed a substantial promissory
note. “The kind of guest,” according to Conrad, “who passes along a folded bill into your palm as if deeding you the world.”

Bellmen know they’re supposed to offer a performance commensurate with their tip. The sure knowledge of a large gratuity makes
them execute bows that come to within an inch of kowtowing. When receiving a palmed bill, bellmen must read the signals with
which it is offered and then take a leap of faith. The etiquette of the situation requires the bellman to offer adequate pomp
and circumstance even before knowing the denomination given to them. That moment of truth comes only after the bellman has
exited the guest quarters and is out in the hallway.

“You open your hand,” said Conrad, “and you expect Jackson, but sweet Ben Franklin or handsome U. S. Grant aren’t unheard-of.
You’ll settle for Hamilton, a fair trade for your performance, but you know that Lincoln sometimes comes up.

“But damn,” said the bellman, “if there aren’t times when you don’t find yourself looking eye to eye with solitary George
Washington. Things are not always as they seem.”

Was this one of those times? thought Am. Had the police offered only a one-dollar explanation to a big-ticket crime?

As if listening for answers, Am heard a voice, then realized it was only the call of the stationmaster. Because his California
bungalow was so close to Del Mar’s train station, Am heard the train announcements often enough to know all of Amtrak’s offerings.
This would be the last commuter train of the night, the 11:05 P.M. run, heading south to downtown San Diego. Am had set his
alarm early enough that he’d probably hear the 5:47 A.M. train going north.

With stops in Oceanside, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Fullerton, and Los Angeles, he thought, stops
he had heard announced thousands of times.

One day I’m going to play hooky from work, Am vowed, and I’m going to take that train north, and get off at every one of those
stops.

And then what? Author Paul Theroux had just kept traveling, finding more and more train lines, rails across continents. But
there is a profound difference between being a traveler and a hotelier. Am had made his permanence out of transience. He had
shared in enough stories and travels as to almost satiate his own wanderlust. Travelers need their ports. That’s what they
talk about over the next horizon. And there were some things in his port he needed to make right—for the travelers, for himself.

There came a long train whistle, and then there came sleep.

“I’m just going to work,” said Am, using the same soothing tones he would employ if encountering a large, mean-looking, unchained
dog. “Just a beautiful drive along the coast.”

Annette started right up. She probably would have been scrap years back if it hadn’t been for Am’s neighbor, Jimbo, who liked
nothing better than working on old cars. Jimbo volunteered his time for “parts and beer,” neither one of which came cheap.
His beer belly (proudly referred to by Jimbo as his “Milwaukee goiter”) would have done a sumo wrestler proud; by Am’s figuring,
he was in to him for a micro-brewery.

I’m raising a car instead of raising a child, Am thought. Maybe it was time to trade in Annette for something whose upkeep
wouldn’t be so expensive—say, the
Queen Mary.
It was not an observation he dared make aloud.

As if to belie her age and temperament, Annette cantered along old 101. The route winds along the coast, and through Del Mar
offers such scenery as to make even jaded commuters look twice. On the approach to Torrey Pines State Reserve, there are no
buildings to obscure the view of the water; to the west there is only the beach and the expanse of ocean. Am did his usual
morning scouting for dolphins (he did the same in the afternoon but usually spotted more bikinis than wildlife) but didn’t
see any. The dolphins often liked to gambol along the surfline, sometimes even taking the waves like seasoned surfers. A storm
had passed through Baja a few days earlier, unusual weather for September, but it suited the surfers just fine. They were
out in abundance, waiting for their rides to glory. The wind was up, and the waves were high. Spindrift dotted Annette’s windshield,
enough to necessitate turning on the wipers. They worked, if irregularly: the story of the car.

There is a point in every commute where the workday begins, where you are on company time even if you’re nowhere near the
time clock. When Am passed Torrey Pines Beach, and the cliffs blocked any potential roadside viewing of dolphins and mermaids,
he started thinking about work. He didn’t consciously see the Torrey Pines (found naturally in only two places in the world
and distinguished from other pine trees by its cluster of five needles), or Scripps Clinic, or the Salk Institute, or the
University of California at San Diego, or even the long pier marking Scripps Institution of Oceanography. For the last six
miles of his drive Am was planning out his workday and praying that there wouldn’t be any new land mines waiting for him.

On his desk were only two incident-related reports, one of which was written on cocktail napkins numbered one through six.
The thespians must have decided it was their turn to make a nuisance of themselves. They had closed down the Breakers Lounge
the night before, and the bartender had reviewed their show. Between drinks, the actors had taken turns doing scenes from
their favorite plays: Shakespeare in the rounds.

Some of their performances had been inspired by the Bob Johnsons. The appearance of Bob Johnsons (identified by their name
tags) had prompted denunciatory scenes (Tennessee Williams was evidently a popular selection, as was Eugene O’Neill), and
several times during the course of the evening the hennaed playwright had, with pointed finger, announced her plight: “It
was supposed to be a six-act play, one for every meal, and red herrings for snacks, but, alas, the Philistines would not have
it.” The bartender/critic didn’t think their vituperation as commanding as other performances. The thespians’ final curtain
call came at two A.M., with closing scenes from
Our Town,
and apparently there wasn’t a dry eye in the lounge.

The last of the cocktail napkins suggested employing the actors at the Breakers for just such performances, as they had proved
more popular than the usual piano bar. The postscript, which was written around what looked to be the partial remains of a
green olive, noted that the actors had run up a six-hundred-dollar bar bill. Am didn’t find that tab as frightening as the
bartender’s suggestion and firmly filed his note away.

The other report was left by one of the Brown’s Guards. Included was a Polaroid shot of a Hotel reader board that had been
tampered with. Apparently someone had neglected to lock up the display, and the Jackson-Ropenhauser Dinner Party in the Whaling
Room had been changed into Jack the Ripper Was Here. Am was sure the alteration was only a prank, but given the circumstances
it didn’t strike him as funny. Any signboard is a magnet for attempted highjinks. Given the opportunity, people like to play
Scrabble with the letters. At most hotels electronic reader boards have taken away that creativity. Entries on an electronic
board are typed on a terminal, which eliminates the laborious process of hand-posting the letters, but the Hotel California
still eschewed such gadgetry, preferring its wooden letters and large oaken reader boards. Am wondered when tradition would
yield to labor costs.

The reader boards were scrutinized by more than group and banquet participants trying to find out where their function was
being held. The Hotel was visited daily by sales representatives of other hotels, callers the industry refers to as reader
board readers. The readers were there for the sole purpose of writing down which groups the Hotel was hosting. They compiled
their lists with the hope that in the future they could lure those same conventions to their properties. One GM Am worked
under had vehemently hated reader board readers. He was all too aware of the half dozen or so “vultures” who visited the property
daily, and the sight of their “carrion feeding” always incensed him. The happiest Am had ever seen his boss was the day of
the bogus reader board entries. On display were the purported gatherings of a Pornography Making Workshop, a Jim Jones Kool-Aid
Tasting, a Symposium on Endangered Faeces, and a Reunion of the Manson Family. What delighted the GM most was how the reader
board readers blithely wrote down the entries in front of them, never questioning what was there.

Was Am doing the same thing? Was there something about the murders he was taking at face value? Getting the chance for deep
thought in any workplace is a rare event. There was something in the back of Am’s mind that wanted to come out, but the thought
was driven away by the rapping at his office door. Whoever was doing the knocking had taken loud lessons from a bull elephant.

Shouting, of necessity: “Come in.”

Jimmy Mazzelli opened the door. “Problem, Am,” he said.

Problem. Why was that a word that usually prefaced his nickname? Jimmy helped himself to an empty chair, his slouch instantaneous.

“What’s the problem, Jimmy?”

“Gent’s losing his cool at the front desk. Last night one of my boys apparently delivered his laundry to the wrong room. Man
didn’t notice until this morning. We’re tracking it down now.”

Jimmy liked to refer to himself as the bell captain and the other bellmen as “his boys,” but his was a self-appointed title.

“Man’s name?”

“Hazleton.”

“Room?”

“Three thirty-eight.”

“How much laundry?”

Jimmy handed over two pink laundry slips, and Am whistled. The last time he had seen a similar laundry bill was when the duke
and duchess had stayed at the Hotel.

“Who delivered it?”

“Wrong way.”

“God. Find it, would you?”

“Like I told the gent, won’t be more than fifteen minutes before we get it to him. We already talked to Wrong Way on the phone,
and he narrowed it down to half a dozen rooms or so.”

“How could he forget where he delivered that much laundry?” asked Am. “How is that humanly possible?”

Jimmy coughed behind his hand. Wrong Way wasn’t someone he ever bad-mouthed; he made Jimmy appear the epitome of competence.

“Why don’t you send Mr. Hazleton back to me.”

“Righto, Am.”

As usual, Jimmy had left out a telling part of the story. When Mr. Hazleton walked into the room, Am expected a man dressed
to the nines, but Hazleton looked more like he was auditioning as a flasher. He was wearing a raincoat and shoes and apparently
nothing else. Am remembered to extend more than his jaw, but Hazleton favored a harangue to his handshake.

“I'd like to know what kind of hotel you're running here?” he asked.

It was a good question, one Am often asked himself. “Why don't you sit down, Mr. Hazleton,” he said. “Would you like some
coffee or tea?”

The offer calmed the guest slightly. “Nothing,” he said. “I just want my laundry.”

“Lots of laundry,” said Am.

“Yes,” he said, “lots of laundry. And the last time I stayed at this hotel the same damn thing happened. This is the second
time my laundry's turned up missing in action.”

There is a multiplying factor to pent-up rage. It explained why Hazleton was out to shoot bear in nothing but his raincoat.
Am let him have his say.

“Why is it,” he continued, “that your property can't manage a simple thing like delivering the damn laundry to the right room?”

The situation called for sympathetic noises, which Am offered. Hotel managers are good at soothing sounds. Anyone who works
in hotels doesn't need to use a thesaurus for the word
sorry.
They live the listings. Mr. Hazleton continued to bemoan his missing laundry, and Am continued to make sounds. For want of
anything else to do, Am also shuffled exhibits A and B, the pink laundry slips. Belatedly he gave them a closer glance and
decided they were friendly to the defense. He passed them over to Hazleton.

“I'm just guessing,” he said, “but the bellman might have misinterpreted your writing. I happen to know you're in room 338,
but from these slips I can see how the items might have been taken to room 328. Or 358. Or 339. Or 388. Or even 329.”

At the Hotel, guests fill out their own laundry slips, and Hazleton's writing should have gotten him into medical school.
Hazleton examined his own writing and was faced with the numeric indictment. “Hmmmm,” he said.

“I'm sure we'll have the laundry to your room in a matter of minutes,” Am said. “In the future, though, we'll take pains to
make sure this never happens again.”

Hazleton nodded, a much more timid man than the one who had entered Am's office. He stood up, paused to give an embarrassed
little wave, then started for the door. As he passed by, Am couldn't help but notice that he wasn't wearing any socks with
his black shoes. Stockings had been part of his missing laundry consignment.