The Ninth Nightmare (3 page)

‘I guess, if you like boredom and trees. Personally I hate being bored and who needs frigging trees?'

John raised his eyebrows and thought:
Who needs frigging trees? That's classy
. Not the usual caliber of guest he would have expected to take to the Griffin House Hotel.

He adjusted his seat belt around his belly. It was way past two thirty and he still hadn't had lunch yet. He had been planning to go to Quizno's on Euclid Avenue when he had dropped this fare off, to pick up a bourbon grille steak sub. He could almost taste it now: prime rib, mozzarella, Cheddar, mushrooms, sauté onions, all covered with grille steak sauce and served up on rosemary Parmesan bread. His mouth watered so much that he had to swallow.

‘Staying here long?' he asked, in a quacky, saliva-filled voice.

‘Not if I can help it. I'm only going to my grandma's funeral.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry. My condolences.'

‘Thanks, but I don't need condoling. I never liked her and neither would you, if you'd ever known her. What a witch. She had a face like somebody looking at themselves in the back of a spoon.'

The traffic began to inch forward. The woman said, ‘At last. Thank you, Lord Jesus.'

As they neared the Griffin House Hotel, John could see three black-and-white police cars lined up outside, their lights flashing, and two uniformed officers directing the traffic. The hotel itself was an imposing brown-brick building with Gothic windows and elaborate spires and a gray slate roof. It was surrounded by tall ivy-wrapped oaks, their leaves already turned rusty and yellow. A crowd of people were milling around the wide stone porch – police officers and TV cameramen and hotel staff, as well as rubbernecking bystanders.

‘Looks like we've got ourselves a little excitement,' said John. He signaled to turn into the curving driveway in front of the hotel and a police officer flagged him down and made a winding gesture for him to lower his window.

‘Just dropping off a hotel guest, officer. What's all the flap-doodle for?'

‘Nothing serious, sir. If you want to pull over to the left side there.'

John parked his yellow Crown Victoria close to the left-hand verge, and heaved himself out of the driver's seat. He opened the door for his passenger to step out, and this time he made a point of looking at her shoes. They were purple suede, the same color as her dress, with gold studs all around them, and very high heels. Her dress was so short that he couldn't help noticing that she was wearing purple nylon panties, too. He gallantly turned his head away and looked up at the sky.

It seemed as if all of the hotel's front-of-house staff were busy talking to the police, so John popped the taxicab's trunk and lifted out the woman's pigskin suitcase. It wasn't Louis Vuitton, but it wasn't cheap. She may have started life in Brunswick (or ‘Brunstucky' as some disparaging Clevelanders called it, an elision of ‘Brunswick' and ‘Kentucky') but she appeared to have money – either made it or married it.

For the first time she took off her sunglasses and she was unexpectedly pretty, even if she did have the slightly battered look of a woman who has struggled to make her way in life and had her fair share of fights. She had bright blonde hair, expensively cut in a feathery bell-shape, wide-apart eyes and a short straight nose, and lips that looked as if they were just about to pout. She had a faint scar on the left side of her chin, as if somebody had punched her, a long time ago, somebody wearing a signet ring.

As John began to walk across the driveway, carrying the woman's case, a skinny young black bellhop in a green uniform came loping up to them. ‘It's OK, junior,' John told him. ‘I got it.'

‘Please, sir, let me help you,' the bellhop begged him, trying to take hold of the handle.

John yanked the case away from him. ‘Oho, so that's your game! You're trying to stiff me out of my tip, is that it?'

‘Of course not, sir. It's my job.'

‘I know, junior. I
know
it's your job. But exactly what part of “I got it” do you find so incomprehensible?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘That's OK, junior. You're excused.'

John carried the suitcase into the reception area, changing hands every three or four steps because the goddamned thing was so heavy. How come women who wore practically nothing always had suitcases that weighed so much? He followed the woman up to the front desk and pinged the bell for her, because there was nobody there.

‘Pretty plushy joint, on the whole,' he said, looking around. The reception area had high vaulted ceilings with decorative plasterwork, thick red floral-patterned carpeting, and leather wing chairs gathered around a crackling log fire. On the wall above the fireplace hung a large oil portrait of a severe-looking man in a formal black suit with black silk facings. His face was so pallid that it was almost white, and his eyes were as dead as stones. The only touches of color were his hair, which was gingery-red, and the ring on his right hand, which had a dark red stone set in it.

Close to this portrait hung another smaller portrait, in an oval frame, of a pretty young woman with wild blonde curls. She had her head tilted to one side, as if she were flirting with the artist who was painting her picture.

John pinged the bell again and this time a receptionist came in from the porch, where she had been talking to a police officer.

‘So sorry to have kept you waiting, sir. Are you checking in today?'

‘Not me – her,' said John, jerking his thumb toward the woman.

‘Ms Rhodajane Berry,' said the woman, resting one elbow on the marble-topped counter. ‘I booked a queen-sized room for tonight and tomorrow night.'

‘Hey,' John put in, ‘you're not related to that
Halle
Berry, are you, by any chance?'

The woman turned and stared at him. ‘Do I
look
like I'm related to Halle Berry? I mean, I'm not being racist here.'

‘Well, you never can tell. It's a funny thing, genetics. And Halle Berry, she's from Cleveland, too, did you know that?'

Rhodajane Berry was still filling in her name and address and credit card details when a bulky man in a flappy gray suit came puffing and panting into the reception area. He was just about the same height as John, about five feet eight, and he probably weighed about the same, too, somewhere in excess of three hundred pounds. He was purple faced, with protuberant blue eyes, and a small curved nose that looked as if it had been stuck on as an afterthought. His eyebrows seemed to be raised in permanent surprise, like two arched-up caterpillars.

He was sporting a wide silk necktie with scarlet and yellow diagonal stripes, and his shirt must have been at least a twenty-two-inch collar, but it still curled upward because it was too tight around his neck.

‘Pardon me, people,' he asked, in a hoarse, strangulated voice. ‘Did you talk to any of my officers yet?' He reached into his pocket and tugged out a notebook, licking his thumb and turning over the pages. ‘What room are you in?'

‘I'm not in any room,' said John. ‘I'm a cabbie and this lady is my fare.'

The detective peered at Rhodajane Berry with his pencil raised in his hand as if he half recognized her. ‘OK . . . what cab company?'

‘Alphabet Cabs. My vehicle's parked right outside. You can call them and check if you want to. You want their number? John Dauphin's the name. John Benjamin Franklin Dauphin. The third. From Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Still trying to get back there, one way or the other.'

The detective gave a quick shake of his jowls to indicate that it wouldn't be necessary to check John's credentials. But then he turned to Rhodajane Berry and said, ‘How about you, ma'am, what room will you be staying in?'

‘She's three-oh-nine,' said the receptionist.

‘Three-oh-nine. OK.' He wrote down 309 and sniffed. Then he said, ‘Have a good stay, won't you? But if you do hear anything or see anything, here's my card. Give me a call anytime.'

Rhodajane Berry looked taken aback. ‘What do you mean, if I hear anything or see anything? What kind of things do you mean?'

The detective hesitated. ‘You know, anything out of the ordinary.'

‘Anything out of the ordinary like
what,
for instance?'

John had to give it to her, Rhodajane Berry had a voice like a braided-wire whip. It could cut through anything.

The detective shrugged. ‘Anything out of the ordinary like the room maybe changing in appearance.'

‘
Excah-use
me? The room changing in appearance? I don't get it. How does a room change in appearance? You mean like I'm going to be lying in bed and somebody's going to come in and start to strip off the wallpaper?'

‘Well, to be honest, ma'am. I don't know any more than you do. But if it
does
change, in any way at all, call me, please. Likewise if you hear shouting or crying or if you find anybody in your room who isn't supposed to be there.'

Rhodajane Berry said, ‘Wait up a second. I seriously do not like the sound of this. Shouting or crying? People in my room who aren't supposed to be there? I'm supposed to be staying here tonight. I'm paying one hundred sixty dollars per night. What the hell kind of crap is this?'

‘There's no need for that language, ma'am. I'm just asking you to be vigilant tonight which isn't a whole lot to ask, is it?'

‘What happened here?' John demanded, ‘What's this all about?'

The detective said, ‘You don't have anything to worry about, sir. You won't be staying here. I suggest you get right back in your taxicab now and leave.'

‘I won't be staying here but this lady will and right now she's still my fare and that makes her my personal responsibility. So what went down here?'

The detective took a deep breath. Then he said, ‘There's nothing for you to get yourself worried about. One of the guests suffered an episode, that's all.'

‘An episode? An episode of what?
Days Of Our Lives
?'

‘No, sir. She had what you might call a hallucination. She thought her room had altered in some way and she thought she saw a strange person in her bed. When the housekeeping staff found her she was in a state of some distress, but there was nothing in her room to indicate that what she had experienced was real.

‘All the same, we've been taking the precaution of asking all of the hotel's guests to call me personally at any time of the night if they think they see or hear anything unusual.'

John dragged out his handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘Sounds to me like for no good reason at all you're causing this good lady here a whole lot of unnecessary anxiety for nothing.'

‘You're entitled to your opinion, Mr Dolphin,' the detective snapped back at him. ‘I'm simply erring on the side of caution. Now, please, if you don't mind, I have to go talk to some sane people.'

‘Hey, wait up! Some
sane
people? You're trying to suggest that I'm some kind of nut job?'

‘No, sir. Not at all. I didn't say that.'

‘Excuse me. You clearly said you have to go talk to some
sane
people, which would suggest to me that you think I'm not one of them. What's your name, detective?'

The detective reached into his breast pocket and took out another card. ‘There. If you have any complaints to make, just contact the UCPD. Now I have to get on.'

John held up the card and squinted at it.
Detective Walter B. Wisocky, University Circle Police Department, 12100 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland Heights
.

‘OK,' he said. ‘Thanks. You can bet that I'll be calling your Chief of Detectives directly after lunch.
Sane
people indeed. The nerve!'

Before he left, however, Detective Wisocky turned back and laid a firm hand on John's shoulder pad.

‘Don't think I'm trying to influence you or nothing,' he breathed, very close to John's ear, and his breath smelled of scallions. ‘But before I leave here I'll be sure to make a note of your medallion number, and believe me, if you make a complaint against me to the Chief of D's, you'd better drive your cab real meticulous in future. And I mean
real
meticulous. Everywhere, and for ever, amen.'

John looked him in the eye, trying to be challenging, but all the same he was thinking about the number of times he had driven to pick up a fare holding a cheesesteak in one hand and a can of Dr Pepper in the other, steering with nothing but his fingertips and his right thigh. He thought of all the illegal U-turns which cut minutes off call-out times, and all of the convenient shortcuts which took him the wrong way down one-way streets. He thought of all the times he had driven to the airport on I-71 at more than eighty-five miles an hour, because he was running late for a pickup.

He said nothing, but Detective Wisocky kept his hand pressed down on his shoulder pad and kept staring at him without blinking for a full five seconds to show that he meant business.

‘Ma'am,' said the receptionist. ‘Here's your key card. I'll have somebody bring your luggage up to your room.'

Detective Wisocky turned and walked off. John watched him for a moment, and then said, ‘No, it's OK, ma'am. I'll carry your case up for you.'

He followed Rhodajane Berry to the elevators, which had highly-polished brass doors. He could see himself standing beside her in his crumpled linen suit, his belly bulging over the waistband. He always thought that he could have been handsome if he hadn't loved food so much. When he was a teenager he had looked a lot like Tab Hunter. Well, more snub-nosed, like Tab Hunter pressing his face against a Burger King window. Now he thought he looked like every fat guy who ever was. Fat.