I was about to try her number again when the phone chirped into life of its own accord. The words AMY’S CELL popped up on the screen. I smiled, pleased at the coincidence, and put the phone up to my ear.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Busy, busy?’
But the person on the other end was not my wife.
‘Who is this, please?’
The voice was male, rough, loud. Coming from Amy’s number it was about as wrong as could be.
‘It’s Jack,’ I said. It sounded dumb. ‘Who …’
‘Is this home?’
‘What? Who are you?’
The voice said something that might have been a name but sounded more like a random collection of syllables.
‘What?’ I repeated. He said it again. Could have been Polish, Russian, Martian. Could have been a coughing fit. There was a lot of noise in the background. Traffic, presumably.
‘Is this home?’ he barked again.
‘What do you mean? What are you doing with …’
The guy had one question and he was going to keep asking it. ‘This is number says “Home”?’
A light went on in my head. ‘Yes,’ I said, finally getting what he was driving at. ‘This is the number listed as “Home”. It’s my wife’s phone. But where’s …’
‘Find in cab,’ the man said.
‘Okay. I understand. When did you find it?’
‘Fifteen minutes. I call when I get good signal. Phones here not always so good.’
‘It belongs to a woman,’ I said, loudly and clearly. ‘Short blonde hair, in a bob, probably wearing a business suit. Have you just carried someone like that?’
‘All day,’ he said. ‘All day women like this.’
‘This evening?’
‘Maybe. Is she there, please? I speak her?’
‘No, I’m not in Seattle,’ I said. ‘She is, and you are, but I am not.’
‘Oh, okay. So … I don’t know. What you want me?’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Stay on the line.’
I quickly walked downstairs and into Amy’s study. Stuck dead centre to the flat screen of her computer was a Post-it note with a hotel name written on it. The Malo, that was it.
All I could hear down the phone was a distant siren. I waited for it to fade.
‘The Hotel Malo,’ I said. ‘Do you know it?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Downtown.’
‘Can you take it there? Can you take the phone to the hotel and hand it in at reception?’
‘Is long way,’ the man said.
‘I’m sure. But take it to reception and get them to call the lady down. Her name is Amy Whalen. You got that?’
He said something that sounded very slightly like Amy’s name. I repeated it another few times and spelt it twice. ‘Take it there, okay? She’ll pay you. I’ll call her, tell her you’re coming. Yes? Take it to the hotel.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Twenty dollar.’
My heart was still thudding after he’d hung up. At least I knew the score. No reply to my last message because Amy hadn’t heard it, which gave me a time before which she had to have lost the phone. When had that been? Around nine, I thought. Or could be she’d lost it earlier in the day and elected to wait until she got back to the hotel to fill me in. Either way, she needed a heads-up to deal with this guy, assuming he was on the level. When phones are stolen the thieves will sometimes call a home number, pretending to be a helpful citizen, in the hope of reassuring the owner that the phone isn’t lost. That way the victim will hold off getting the phone killed at the network, leaving the perpetrator free to use the hell out of it until the agreed handover time, when they just drop it in the trash. If this guy was using that scam there wasn’t a lot I could do about it – I wasn’t going to cancel Amy’s phone without talking to her first. The hotel’s number wasn’t on the note, unsurprisingly – we always communicated via cell when she was out of the house, which is how come mine was down as ‘Home’ in her contacts list.
Ten seconds on the internet tracked down the Hotel Malo. I called the number and withstood the receptionist’s mandatory welcoming message, which included highlights of the day’s restaurant specials. When he was done I asked to be put through to Amy Whalen. A faint background rattle of someone typing. Then: ‘I can’t do that right now, sir.’
‘She’s not back yet?’ I checked the clock. Nearly midnight. Kind of late, however important the client. ‘Okay. Put me through to voice mail.’
‘No, sir, I meant I have no one here under that name.’
I opened my mouth. Shut it again. Had I got the dates wrong? ‘What time did she check out?’
More tapping. When the man spoke again he sounded circumspect. ‘I have no record of a reservation being made under that name, sir.’
‘For today?’
‘For the past week.’
‘She’s been in town two days,’ I said patiently. ‘She arrived Tuesday. She’s in town until Friday morning. Tomorrow.’
The guy said nothing.
‘Could you try “Amy Dyer”?’
I spelt ‘Dyer’ for him. This had been her name before we married, and it was credible that someone in her office might have made a booking for her in that name seven years later. Just about credible.
Tapping. ‘No, sir. No Dyer.’
‘Try Kerry, Crane & Hardy. That’s a company name.’
Tapping. ‘Nothing for that either, sir.’
‘She never checked in?’
‘Can I help you with anything else this evening?’
I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. The guy waited a beat, told me the hotel group’s URL, and cut the connection.
I took the Post-it from the screen. Amy’s handwriting is extremely legible. You can make out what it says from low-lying space orbits. It said Hotel Malo.
I dialled the hotel again and got put through to reservations. I re-checked all three names. At the last minute I remembered to get myself transferred back to the front desk, this time reaching a woman. I told her that someone would be bringing in a cell phone, asked if she’d hold it under my name. I gave her my credit card number against twenty bucks to pay the driver.
Then I went back on the web. Did searches for hotels in downtown for anything similar to ‘Malo’. I found a Hotel Monaco, only a few streets away. Their website suggested it was exactly the kind of place Amy hung her coat on trips: funky decor, restaurant specializing in Pan-Cajun this, that and the other, complementary goldfish in the rooms. Whatever the fuck that meant.
I looked at her note again. It could just about be ‘Monaco’, if written in a hurry or while having an embolism. It might even be she’d misheard the name when being told where she’d been booked, and written it down wrong for me. Mal-o/Monac-o. Maybe.
I called the Monaco front desk and got someone human and responsive. She was able to quickly and regretfully establish that my wife was