In a good light, and when he smiles, Dan Howard regular features, — gives a handsome first impression blue eyes, a fine head of hair. It takes a moment to note that the corners of his mouth are perpetually soured as if by a bad taste on the back of his tongue. Dan has legendary rotten luck.
“Okay,” I say, “you give me four hours, until 2:00 a.m. Can you do that?”
“Sure. What’s going on?”
When we get to 1507, Arnie is eating a box of McNuggets and watching detectives sift through garbage. He snaps the television off when we come in. “All quiet, Joe. I had the door wide open. Nobody went down the hall.”
“Where’d you get the McDonald’s?” I ask him.
Arnie looks guilty. “Maurice sent ’em up for me.”
“Anybody come up the fire stairs? Service elevator?”
Arnie glances over at Dan and changes the subject. “What took you so long?”
“Go home, Arnie,” I tell him. “Get some sleep. Get back by 9:00 a.m.”
“Yeah, okay,” he says. He collects his McNuggets and his large Coke and waddles out.
After Arnie goes, I tell Dan what’s going on.
“It’s just sitting in there?”
“Just sitting in there. I don’t want anyone taking it. I don’t know if the hotel would be liable or not, but it would sure make the front pages if it went missing, and Leo Alexander wouldn’t like that.”
“Bet his kids would,” Dan says.
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t like it, either. I’ll carry the cell phone with me. Let me know what’s happening whenever it happens. I’ll have Gritch relieve you at 2:00 a.m. If you start getting sleepy, tell me. And let me know when Buznardo and his sister get home from the party down the hall.”
“Don’t worry about it, Joe. Knowing how much money is lying around is going to keep me wide awake.”
Standing in front of the elevators, I hear traces of music sifting down the hall from 1529, but I don’t want to go back there anymore.
chapter five
“Grab some sleep,” I tell Gritch when I get back to the office. “Dan’s good for four hours. I’ll wake you at one-thirty.”
“Arnie didn’t fill out his report,” he says. “Just hauled ass out of here.”
“I don’t want to fire him until Lloyd gets back.”
Gritch sits down to untie his shoes. “Are they real brothers-in-law? He and Lloyd?”
“I don’t know how it works. Arnie’s wife is Lloyd’s sister-in-law. There’s some kind of connection.”
“Not enough of one to put up with his crapola,” Gritch says.
“I have to eat something. Any of that chicken left in the fridge?”
“See?” Gritch says. “That’s what I’m talking about. He goes through the fridge like a cucaracha convention. Never leaves anything for anybody else, never buys anything.”
“I’ll get something in the kitchen,” I say.
Gritch has located an abused cigar stub in his ashtray on the second desk. He rummages in the desk drawer and finds a pack of matches, which seems to cheer him up. “Not to mention Dan Howard, the world’s worst gambler,” he says. “We’ve got some serious staff problems around here, slugger.”
“I know.” I open the window to move some fresh air inside. The street below is beginning to shine. A light rain is falling. Connor’s Diner closed hours ago. In the Scientology Reading Room next door, a dozen or more well-groomed young people are discussing something important, something they’re all sure about. I wish I knew what it was.
The Palm Court’s main kitchen is shutting down. An acre of newly wiped stainless steel. In a cloud of steam at the far end of the room, the last of the day’s pots and pans are being scrubbed. The laundry bins are stuffed with sweaty kitchen whites. One of the young line cooks offers me a bowl of the pasta he’s fixing for the staff. It looks pretty good, smells even better. Simple Italian fare, sausage and peppers and a solid hit of garlic. I still have people to deal with, so I settle for a slice of leftover roast beef and a cold dinner roll. The young cook tries to talk me into something less spartan, but I’m not really hungry. I just need fuel.
The cell phone in my pocket starts ringing. Hotel property. It plays a song. I never know which button to push to make the music stop. The little lid annoys me.
“Yep? I’m here.” Talking with my mouth full.
“Hey, champ, it’s Barney. We had a D and D on a bar tab and one of the girls tried to stop the asshole and he pushed her.”
The good thing about a cell phone, of course, is that you don’t have to hang up before you can start moving. I park the sandwich and head for the kitchen stairs.
“She okay?” I ask.
“She hurt her wrist.”
Down one flight, around the corner, I hear the music. “I’m right there, Barney.”
Barney spots me coming in and points to the far end of the bar, closer to the street entrance, where one of the servers is sitting at a table with her back to the crowd.
“How bad is it?” I ask her. “It’s Laurel, right?”
“Hi. Yes. It’s not too bad. I tried to stop myself from falling.”
“This just happen?”
“Like two minutes ago. He just went out there. He was chasing somebody.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Big, moustache, green jacket.”
“I’ll be right back, Laurel. Sit tight.”
On the street there’s no sign of Green Jacket in either direction.
“Andrew?” I ask our doorman. “Big man, green jacket, just came out of Olive’s?”
“He didn’t pass the front, Joe. Maybe he went the other way.”
“Hey, Grundy.” Maxine has her cab parked third in line in front of the hotel. “You looking for somebody?”
“Big guy, ran out on his bar tab.”
“Went thattaway,” she says. “Chasing a little dude. All the way down and around the corner.”
“Thanks.”
All the way down and around the corner is the full length of the hotel plus the adjacent vacant lot where the Warburton Building stood until a year ago. A roofed walkway of plywood and scaffolding surrounds the lot, and the sidewalk superintendent windows look in on a hole in the ground and not much more. No sign of the man I’m searching for, or of the little dude he was after. Two blocks away a car runs a red light and gets away with it. I retrace my steps.
Maxine gets out of her cab, holding a newspaper over her head to keep off the drizzle. “Long gone?”
“Yeah, missed him.”
“Hop in. We’ll chase him.”
“That’s okay. I’ll find him when I need him.” Andrew is waving her forward from the steps. “You’re up,” I tell her.
Andrew holds an umbrella over the ash-blond hair and grey silk suit of the woman now stepping off the carpet to the sidewalk.
“Excuse me,” I say to her.
She