Gumshoe Gorilla (42 page)

"Sorry to disappoint you," I said.

"What about the women in the clips?" Drew asked. "They had to know this was a set up. If we could find them, they might be able to tell us who hired..."

"Yes,
if
we could find them," Linda said, cutting him off. "Four women named 'Ms. Smith' who paid for his services in cash. Your partner gonna whip our her magic Ouija board for this one?"

Drew ignored the comment. I filed it under
accounts payable
.

"What about the hotel rooms?" Drew continued. "Someone had to pay for them. Expensive places like that would insist on taking a credit card number. We could try to..."

"Yes," Linda interrupted again. "We could. If we had the room numbers. Unfortunately, they're not visible in any of the clips, and Eddie doesn't keep records of such things. The most he can tell us is which hotel each of these transactions took place in."

"How were the meetings with these women set up?" I asked.

"It was done through an 'escort' agency that Eddie works for out in LA," Linda said.

She saw me opening my mouth with the follow up question and cut me off before I could even start.

"And I've already run that down. The agency wasn't too happy to have someone snooping around their client list, but I managed to bribe one of their phone jockeys into letting me into their database. The good news is that Eddie's employer keeps surprisingly... detailed... records of her customer's tastes. The bad news is that she didn't have anything on the four women in question. They were all new clients, without a track record. They each called requesting Eddie, they each saw him three times, they each paid cash. And none of them has called since."

Hm. I was beginning to see what she meant by that brick wall metaphor.

"What are the blackmailers asking for?" I asked. "I mean, a set up like this takes money and planning. I can't believe that Eddie has enough in the bank to make it worth their while. Are they betting that the other brothers will chip in to keep him out of jail, or..."

"No," Linda said, cutting me off again. I was beginning to think that she was physically incapable of letting anyone else finish a sentence. "That's what's really weird about all this. The blackmailer hasn't asked for money at all. Instead, he's been sending Eddie e-mails, demanding that he do things."

"Do things?" I asked. "Like what?"

"Crazy stuff. I can't make heads or tails of it. Here, take a look."

Linda called up a document on the wall monitor.

"This is the first message, which Eddie got on the 20th of March."

Drew and I read it over.

If you do not want to see these clips forwarded to the police, you will do exactly as I say. Any deviation, however slight, from these instructions will result in you going to prison. Tomorrow, March 21, you will fly to Washington DC. You will proceed to the Arlington Hilton, where you will check in with only a small bag. At 8 PM you will order dinner from room service. At 10:30, you will open the door and look out into the hall. At 11 PM, you will call room service and order a bottle of Johnny Walker brand Scotch. From that point on you are not to leave the room or make any phone calls until 5:30 AM the next morning. At that point, you will open the door, and look out into the hall again. You will make a conspicuous mess in the room, and leave at 10 am precisely. While checking out, you will apologize for the mess, and leave a $100 tip for the hotel staff.

I glance at Drew to see if he had finished reading it. He looked back at me and raised an eyebrow. I shook my head. I didn't know what to make of it either.

"Did anything happen that night?" Drew asked.

Eddie shrugged.

"Not that I noticed."

"And it gets even stranger," Linda said. She called up another document. "This arrived a few days later."

I read the new letter.

Tomorrow, on March 27, you will take a morning flight to Atlanta. From the airport, you will take a cab to the Regency Hyatt, checking in at 7 pm with a suitcase, requesting a room on the 15th floor. You will not leave the room at any time. At 9 pm you will place a phone call to 1-00-87-562-889-987. At 9:15 pm, you will open the door to your room and see if there is anyone standing in the hall. If there is, you will make no contact with them. After this, you will not place any calls, order anything from room service, or watch any television. You will sleep on the floor, and leave the bed undisturbed. At 6 am, you will open the door to your room again, and see if there is anyone standing in the hall. Do not talk to them. You will then go back inside, and watch television, until 8 am, when you will check out. You will leave a $100 tip for the maid. Failure to obey these instructions in every detail will result in your arrest as a drug dealer.

I didn't know what to make of this one either.

"Did anything happen this time?" I asked.

Eddie shook his head.

"When you looked out in the hall, was there anyone there?"

Another shake for "no".

"What about the phone number?" Drew asked. "Who does it belong to?"

"A redialing service in Indonesia," Linda said. "They'll forward calls when you don't want your name to come up on caller ID. They explained their service to Eddie when he called, but didn't seem to have any instructions for him."

I scratched my head at that one.

"Are there more of these?" I asked.

"Oh yeah. We're just getting started."

Linda called up the next letter.

On March 29th, you will fly to New York. You will arrive at the Ritz Carlton at 9 PM. You will proceed to the hotel bar, where you will have drinks until 11 PM. You will then leave a $50 tip with the bartender, and pay the tab on your credit card. You will proceed to the lobby, where you will find an envelope with further instructions hidden in the planter to the left of the main door. If you do not obey these instructions in every detail, evidence of your crimes will be forwarded to the police.

"What was in the envelope?" Drew asked, when we'd finished reading.

Linda got up and opened a small briefcase, from which she withdrew a sheet of paper sealed in a plastic cover.

"This," she said, "and a room key."

She placed the document on the coffee table where we could read it.

Take the elevator up to the 14th floor. Then take the stairs down to the seventh. The key in this envelope will let you into room 709. You will spend the night there, making no phone calls and placing no orders to room service. You will depart at 6:15 the next morning, leaving the key on the bed. Walk back up the stairs to the 14th floor, take the elevator down to the lobby, and exit without talking to anyone.

The note was written on hotel stationery, in carefully printed block letters. I noticed that there were dark purple finger prints on the document. Drew picked it up and looked at them.

"Ninhydrin fuming? I'm impressed."

"Fat lot of good it did me," Linda responded. "The only prints were Eddie's. The blackmailer must have used gloves."

"Who paid for the room?" Drew pressed.

"Don't know. I tried to find out, but that hotel has a lot of celebrity guests. They're majorly paranoid about data security."

"How many more messages are there?" I asked.

"Six," Linda said. "Including one he received just yesterday."

She called them up sequentially, and we read through them. The details varied, but the gist was always the same: go to some hotel and perform a series of apparently meaningless actions-- or else. The last one directed Eddie to spend tonight at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta.

"So what do you think?" Charles asked when we were done. "Do you have any idea what they're after?"

Drew shook his head.

"If it weren't such an elaborate set up, I'd say the whole thing is a joke. But it's hard to imagine anyone putting this much time and money into a prank."

"And besides," I said, "the words don't feel like they come from a prankster."

Linda shot me a skeptical look.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, just read the words. Now try to imagine the person who would say them. The instructions are short, to the point, and meticulously detailed. I mean, the guy even specified how much Eddie is supposed to tip. We're dealing with a seriously anal personality here. Someone who's organized, methodical, and accustomed to giving orders. The sort of guy that you'd want for a middle management job. But not a prankster."

"So where does that leave us?" Charles asked.

"It could be a stalker," I suggested. "Someone with control fantasies who has a fixation on the Rockland brothers. Maybe they get off on Eddie's fear and being able to order him around."

"Maybe," Drew said. "But then why have Eddie fly all over the country? And why have him spending so much time in closed hotel rooms? If the blackmailer wants control, wouldn't he want to keep Eddie close to him, so that he could savor it? Wouldn't he order Eddie to do things in public places, where the blackmailer could watch him carrying out the instructions?"

"You've got a point," I agreed. "Where were all those hotels again?"

Linda brought up a list. The hotels were in New York, DC, Richmond, and Atlanta. All on the east coast, but I couldn't see any connection beyond that. The hotels in Richmond and New York had each been used only once, but Eddie had been ordered to the hotel in DC twice, and the one in Atlanta five times.

"Anybody see a pattern in this?" I asked.

"Not yet," Drew said.

He turned on his throat mic, and ordered up a few searches, trying to find something that linked the hotels. But one by one, his queries all came back negative. The hotels weren't owned by the same conglomerates. There were no news stories that featured all of them. They weren't even built by the same architect or construction company.

"Damn," he said. "Nobody goes to this much trouble unless they're after something. But what? It can't be money, or they would have asked for it by now. It can't be some vendetta against Eddie, because they've already got enough to put him away. So what are they after? What is so important about having Eddie Rockland run around the country spending nights in a series of hotel rooms?"

Drew looked around the circle of faces, but none of us had any ideas.

"There has to be
something
," he said again. "Something about these particular hotels on these particular dates that makes them important. Something subtle enough that it doesn't turn up on a web search."

Drew stared at the list of hotels for a while, as if he was going to pull an answer from the screen by sheer force of will.

"Well, sometimes you just have to go looking," I suggested. "Even if you don't know what it is that you're looking for."

"What do you have in mind?" Linda asked.

"According to the latest set of instructions, Eddie has a date at the Regency Hyatt tonight. So why don't the three of us crawl around that hotel all night and see what we can dig up? If Drew's right, then there must be something going on in that building that's important to the blackmailer."

Linda frowned.

"That's a pretty vague plan."

"You got a better one?" I asked.