“You see, Am?” said Mary. “Everything turned out all right.”
The Bob Johnsons were noisily finding their seats, the same Bob Johnsons whose imminent arrival had wreaked panic on the Hotel. Anything short of a death, and Mary would always maintain that everything had turned out all right.
Am wasn’t listening. He was intent on thinking up a speech. On the way over to the Spindrift Room he had thought of a grand theme. Everyone who worked in a hotel was a hotel detective, even if the cases they toiled over weren’t the sort to make headlines. Hotel detectives tried to answer the little questions and concerns that popped up on any given day. So far Am’s speech had translated into the words Welcome, Bob Johnsons. Maybe it wasn’t such a grand theme after all. The rest of his draft was still blank.
Mary tapped on the microphone to see if it was operational. It was something she needn’t have done. Herman Gerschlach was the director of meeting services. He was a now he didn’t want a wake-up call, dammit, because he’d probably be up for the rest of the night.
There were a few amused laughs from the Bob Johnsons, but Am sensed he hadn’t gotten through. They didn’t want wake-up stories. They didn’t want human nature. They wanted true crime tales, and he was hard-pressed to provide that. Wiping the sweat from his face, Am stole a glance at his watch. He’d been talking for less than ten minutes, but enough was enough. It was time for a grand finale he didn’t have.
“Being the hotel detective usually isn’t glamorous,” he said. “Sometimes it’s figuring out which room has the pet in it. Sometimes it’s deciphering who a message is for. Sometimes it’s as mundane as determining whether you should be charging for a single or a double. And sometimes it’s just tracing a little child’s steps to find a lost stuffed animal.”
And sometimes it’s just boring an audience, he thought. When he stopped talking, not too many people noticed. “Are there any questions?” he asked.
“I hear you had a leaper last night,” said Bull with his foghorn voice, suddenly awakening the audience.
“An unfortunate incident,” Am said. “Out of respect for the deceased’s family, it is not a subject open to discussion.”
Bull was sidetracked—a little. “You had any murders here?” he asked.
“Not in the years I’ve been here,” said Am. There was a collective sigh from the Murder Mayhem Weekend participants. He realized his guilt at their disappointment was not logical, but at the same time he began to understand why performers would try anything, and say anything, to regain an audience.
“But we have had some serious disturbances. Why, recently there was even gunfire.”
That drew some appreciative murmurs. And the demand for details.
“The guest was annoyed with the seagulls,” said Am.
The Bob Johnsons’ reaction made Am wonder if gladiator contests had drawn more charitable crowds. Their disappointment was palpable. He tried to talk up the story anyway.
“The man had called the desk a few times to complain about the birds,” he said. “The gulls were interfering with his nap. He said he couldn’t even step out onto his balcony without them harassing him. We explained that we would be glad to move him to another room, but he told us he didn’t want to move. He said that if we couldn’t help him, he’d help himself, and that’s when he started shooting at the gulls.”
“What happened?” Bull shouted.
“It’s against the law for guests to have firearms in their rooms,” Am said. “The police confiscated the man’s gun and cited him for shooting within the city limits.”
Bull shook his head, or at least swiveled it back and forth. He was one of those people who seemed to be missing a neck. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, looking rather disgusted at Am’s denseness. “Did he hit any of the birds?”
The microphone amplified Am’s surprised intake of breath. The sound was not unlike a birdlike squawk.
“Hard hitting birds with a handgun,” Bull announced.
A number of heads nodded in agreement. Am had heard of round robin discussions, but this was a group he suspected would prefer dead robin discussions. Stiffly he asked: “Any other questions?”
Someone else besides Bull finally spoke up, a happy-looking red-haired man who was holding hands with an equally happy-looking platinum blonde. “What was your most unusual case?” he asked.
Dare he mention the bra thefts? But that was an ongoing investigation. Am tried to think of anything vaguely resembling a case that he had ever worked on. There were the times he had confiscated bad credit cards at the front desk, and there were the noise complaints he had attended to personally. He had helped separate fighting husbands and wives, and he'd once evacuated the building when there was a bomb threat. But a case?
“Most unusual case,” Am said aloud, acting as if there were hundreds for him to choose from. A case indicated a mystery, something he had solved. And while at the moment he felt he was in the middle of too many mysteries, he couldn't say that he had ever really figured out a crime. Or had he?
“That would probably be the mad remote controller,” he said.
Over a period of three days and nights a number of guest rooms had called to say that their televisions had mysteriously shut off on them. Most of the transmission disruptions had occurred on the first floor. Some sets had deactivated five, even six times. Maintenance hadn't found anything wrong with the televisions or electrical system. The staff began crediting supernatural explanations, pointing primarily to the Hotel ghost (Am still wasn't sure whether he believed in that poltergeist), but the culprit proved to be flesh and blood and hardly a hardened criminal.
It wasn't genius that helped Am to solve the crime. It was the woman's legs. They were extremely attractive and made him pause on a stairwell to admire them. When she also paused, ostensibly to tie her tennis shoe, Am was being more observant than usual. And that's when he noticed her surreptitiously pull out a television remote control from her purse. He watched her aim and shoot.
All of the Hotel's television sets are the same; all operate by remote control. The woman had been scouting out rooms where she could use her censor's touch. Her easiest targets had been first-floor rooms with their patio doors open.
Am explained the woman was mad at her husband. She said that even though they were on vacation, they might as well have been at home. Apparently, he didn't want to do anything except watch TV. She had stormed out of their room after they had argued, had unwittingly departed with a remote control in hand. She hadn't set out with the intention of being a vandal of the airwaves, but while walking around the courtyard trying to gain her composure, she had been interrupted by a blaring television. Before the woman knew what she was doing, she had taken aim and knocked the offensive set off the airwaves. That was the beginning of her mission, her vendetta. She was only sorry that her room was on the fifth floor, too high up to zap their television out of commission.
The woman had given up her remote control without a fight. It wouldn't have ended that way on the TV, she had told Am.
With the Bob Johnsons finally receptive, and his speaking pump primed, Am remembered a few other victories over crimes, talked about the capture of the haughty man with the epicurean stomach who had falsely signed in their restaurants at least a dozen times before being caught. He liked good food but didn't have the means to pay for it. When apprehended, the man was anything but repentant. While being led off, he had opined to Am that they should get some new menus in the Marina Restaurant.
“They're getting to be the scratch and sniff variety,” he had announced disdainfully.
Everyone laughed, except maybe Bull. Am felt good. Now he had them. Maybe he could tell them about—
Jimmy Mazzelli ran into the room. How many times had Am told him not to run? Hotels were an illusion, and illusionists weren’t supposed to rush or sweat. Through sleight of hand, with a flourish, hotel workers were expected to conjure up visions of beauty. No one cared how the tricks were done, no one wanted to know that to make ice displays and floral arrangements, or to feed five hundred people and bring water and then wine (or, better yet, change water into wine), there were hundreds of invisible staff working, some circulating as anonymously as possible, others toiling feverishly behind the scenes. But here was Jimmy, being anything but invisible, bounding right up onto the stage where Am was speaking and wildly motioning him away from the microphone. Reluctantly he stepped back.
Jimmy spoke for Am’s ear only. He didn’t count on Herman’s acoustical wizardry. His excited whisper was converted into a reverberating screech: “Am, Cotton just found two fucking corpses in one of the rooms.”
It would have been difficult distinguishing who looked more shocked: Jimmy, listening to the echo of his profane words, or Am, who didn’t want to believe the messenger.
Unwillingly: “Two?”
Jimmy had learned his lesson. He nodded mutely.
“Hokey,” announced Bull Johnson, loudly enough for the rest of his brethren to hear. “I was up in Frisco for one of these murder mystery weekends, and they started their program in just the same way.”