“Shouldn’t you be over there?”
“I’m not the only guy working,” he says. “I’ve got assistants. Don’t know their asses from their elbows, either of ’em, but Leo knows where I am if something comes up.”
“What kind of stuff comes up?”
“What doesn’t?” he says.
Leo was reopening the original owner’s penthouse above the Fifteenth Floor and was planning on living there. When I arrived there were workmen all over the place — plumbers, glaziers, electricians. Leo was personally overseeing every phase of the operation. He had already established a small office complete with phone, fax, computer, and a leather couch where he was spending his nights pending completion of his bedroom.
“Joseph,” he says. “How are you feeling? How’s the arm?”
“I’ve healed up just fine, sir,” I say. “How are you?”
“Very busy, very busy, Joseph.”
“I can see that.”
“I don’t mean all the hammering,” he says. “I’m retrenching, circling the wagons so to speak. Backing away from a number of interests, going to concentrate on getting the Lord Douglas back on her feet.”
“That’s nice, sir. She’s a fine old hotel.”
“And I want you to be part of that.”
“In what capacity, sir?”
“Hotel security. There’s a job opening.”
“Working for Mr. Gritchfield?”
“No. He’d be working for you.”
Gritch had spent much of his working life sitting between a fern and a palm tree in the lobby of the Lord Douglas, from which observation post he surveyed every entry and departure. He was a married man, but his wife maintained that he was a bigamist and that his first wife was the hotel.
In the old days Gritch would lift whatever newspaper he was hiding behind to sip from a flask but when we first teamed up he told me he was on the wagon.
“I’ve been sober for three years,” Gritch told me. “Three years, three months, and one, two, three days, hey, no, it’s after midnight, four days.”
“Congratulations,” I say.
“No mean feat,” he says. “I was never a binge drinker. I was a steady, well-schooled, dedicated souse, ambulatory and capable of coherent discourse. I was a pro.”
“What made you stop?”
“Oh, you know, wife.”
“Oh.”
“She said there were three things in my life: the hotel, the booze, and her. She said I was going to have to drop one of them.”
Louis Schurr retired a few months later, died a few months after that, and I started work at a job I wasn’t particularly well-suited for, running a small staff of less-than-stalwart operatives. Nonetheless, I managed to make a go of it, predominantly because of Wallace Gritchfield.
That was eight years ago.
“How many special keys are there anyway?” Gritch wants to know. “Keys that will get you up to the penthouse?”
My expensive cigar suddenly tastes foul. Extravagance is an acquired habit. Gritch seems able to deal with it.
“One in Lloyd’s office. We’ve got one.”
“You carry that one all the time. Is there another one in this office?”
I shake my head. “Maurice has one I think.”
“Nope. Maurice has to get the one from Lloyd’s office.”
“Got to be more than two, right?” I say. “Leo has one. And Raquel. She must’ve had one.”
That brings a moment of silence.
“Housekeeping,” I say. “Mrs. Dineen.”
“Yeah. Her too,” Gritch says. “And there’s the fire door.”
“Someone went out that way,” I say. “Why didn’t the bells start ringing?”
“Maybe they knew the security code.”
Right, I’m thinking — keys, security codes, but no cameras.
“Should have had cameras up there,” I say. “The place just got outfitted with security cameras on every floor. Why didn’t Leo install them up there?”
“Privacy,” says Gritch. “He’s a bear for his privacy.”
First thing in the morning, before toast and coffee, I check in with Lloyd Gruber and Margo Traynor, manager and assistant manager respectively, in Margo’s office (Lloyd doesn’t like me in his office, he worries that I’ll break something). Their reactions are predictable. Margo says, “Oh, my God, that poor woman. Is Leo all right?” And Lloyd says, “Christ, the papers will have a field day!”
He can put his worries on hold for a few hours at least. The morning papers haven’t yet picked up the story. I have a look at the Emblem in the Lobby Café while Hattie butters my toast.
“It’s true, Joe?” She doesn’t want to believe it. “Raquel?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe it,” she says. “Such a nice person.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“The police don’t know, I don’t know, Leo doesn’t know. It looks like someone broke in somehow.”
“Up there? How?”
“That’s what they’re trying to find out.”
“Who would do a thing like that? Such a nice person,” Hattie says. “She gave me a Christmas card last year. She said Mr. Alexander always spoke well of my mother.”
“Yes, she was very thoughtful,” I say. I’ve just remembered that Raquel wanted me to pick up something for her. Where’s the receipt? Still in the pocket of my tux, likely. Leo’s not going to feel much like celebrating a birthday tomorrow, but I suppose I’d better attend to it anyway. I promised.
“Is there going to be a funeral?”
“I’ll let you know, Hattie,” I say. “The police haven’t released the body yet.”
“Oh, the poor dear,” she says. “Such a sweet person.”
The uniformed cop who lets me into Leo’s closet is impressed with the array. For someone who never went out, Leo has a long clothes rack. I follow Manny Bigalow’s old-school rules. “No cufflinks until evening …” White shirt, charcoal grey suit, striped tie. “Always appropriate …” Plenty to choose from — black shoes, dark grey socks. I get the socks and fresh underwear from one of the dressers in his bedroom. I’ve never been in here before. King-size bed faces a big-screen television, reading material on both side tables, an ashtray on the left side, a Martha Stewart magazine on the right. Leo’s linen is perfectly sorted and aligned in the dresser drawers. I can sense Raquel’s careful attention to detail. And something more. She smoothed these stacks of laundry with her hands before she closed the drawer. I can feel it.
The policeman lets me stare into the living room for a few seconds before he gets twitchy about my presence. The French doors are smashed. Possible point of entry. But from where? The floor below? I’ll need to get out on the terrace to see if it’s possible, but that