Ritual (13 page)

You don’t want
him to think that you’re the kind of man he’d rather not have for a father.’

Charlie checked
his watch. ‘Okay. You’re right. But stick around. Meet me in the lobby in ten
minutes’ time and we’ll have breakfast together.’

‘I never eat
breakfast.’

‘Well, I have
to. You can always toy with a cup of coffee.’

Velma said
nothing as Charlie went to the door. He opened it, and stood there for a moment
simply looking at her. ‘Ten minutes then,’ he said.

Charlie went to
the reception desk first of all, to see if there were any messages for him. The
bell captain smirked, and said, ‘One from your wife, Mr McLean. She wants you
to call her back.’

‘When did she
call?’

‘Maybe eleven last night, sir.’

‘Didn’t you put
her through to my room?’

‘You weren’t in
your room, sir.’ The smirk grew wider.

‘Not right
then, no. But my son was.’

The bell
captain’s eyes blinked an almost imperceptible negative. ‘There was no reply,
sir. We did think of putting the call directly through to you, but we
considered that you might not appreciate it too much, not right then, sir.’

He walked
through the unkempt gardens of the Windsor Hotel and through to his room in the
annexe. When he got there, he found that the door was wide open, and that there
were two black maids in there, one cleaning out the bath and the other making
the bed. The bedside radio was playing ‘The Girl
From
Ipanema’.

‘Pardon me,’
said Charlie, ‘did you see my son here this morning?’

The maid who
was making the bed looked up slowly and shook her head.
‘No,
sir.
This room was empty this morning.’

‘But he was
sleeping here.
A boy of fifteen, brown hair.
Light
blue windcheater and jeans.’

‘No, sir.
This room was empty. There’s some luggage here,
sir, but that’s all.’

Charlie opened
the closet and there was his own overnight case, as well as two of his shirts
hanging on hangers, just where he had left them. But there was no sign of
Martin’s case,
nor
of any of Martin’s clothes. Skit,
thought Charlie, / left him alone last night and now he’s run away. I failed
him when he was a kid and Fve failed him again. Now what the hell am I going to
do?

He went into
the bathroom. Martin’s toothbrush was gone, and there was no sign of any
farewell message written on the mirror with Crest. Back in the bedroom, the
maids had almost finished.

They were
performing their last ritual of laying out fresh books of matches and luridly
coloured postcards of the Windsor Hotel photographed in the days when the
gardens hadn’t looked like a snakepit.

‘Was there a note
anywhere?’ Charlie asked them.
‘A piece of paper with a
message on it?’

The maids made
a desultory attempt to look through their black plastic trash bag.
‘No, sir.

Nothing like that.’

Charlie took
one last look around, and then went to the reception desk. The bell captain was
picking his teeth behind his hand.

‘My son,’ said
Charlie.

‘I’m sorry?’
the bell captain asked him.

‘My son was in
109 but he’s gone.’

The bell
captain eyed him steadily.
‘Your son?’

‘I left my son
sleeping in 109 last night, but now he’s not there.’

‘Your son was
sleeping in 109?’

Charlie smacked
his hand flat on the desk. ‘Do you have to keep repeating everything I say? I
want to know what time my son checked out of here, and if he told anybody where
he was going.’

‘Your son sure didn’t
check out of here, sir.’ ‘You mean he left without anybody seeing him?’

‘No, sir, I
mean your son sure didn’t check out of here. The reason being that he never
checked in.’ ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ The bell captain looked
back at him dispassionately, with the face of a man who has spent a lifetime
dealing with irritable customers and pays them about as much attention as he
would to a few exhausted wasps, buzzing around in a jelly-jar. ‘You checked in
here at 5:45 yesterday evening, sir?’

‘That’s
correct.’

‘At that time,
sir, you were alone.’

‘What? What is
this? I mean, what kind of ridiculous joke are you trying to play here? I
booked in yesterday evening with my fifteen-year-old son, and if you look at my
registration card you’ll see that I’ve included his name.
Charles
J. and Martin S. McLean.’

The bell
captain reached under the counter and slid out a narrow file drawer crowded
with registration cards. He rifled through them until he came to the M–Me
section, and tugged out Charlie’s registration card. ‘This is the one, sir. See
what it says?’

Charlie stared
at the card in horror and disquiet. It read nothing more than Charles J.
McLean, 49 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10010. Fastened to the card was an
impression of his American Express card, and that was all. There was no doubt
that the writing on the card was his. He even remembered how the pen had almost
run out of ink halfway through, and how he had
squiggled
it hard on the bottom of the card to start it flowing again. There were the
squiggles, just as before. But what had happened to Martin’s name?

‘I don’t even
pretend to get this,’ said Charlie harshly, giving back the card. ‘But my son
arrived here with me last night, and yesterday evening before I went to dinner
I left him in 109. This morning he’s gone – no message, no nothing – that’s not
like him at all.’

‘Do you want to
talk to the manager about it?’ asked the bell captain.

‘Yes, call him.
And there’s somebody else I want to talk to, too. Ms Velma Farloe. I don’t
recall her room number, but she should still be there now.’

‘Ms Velma
Farloe? I’m sorry, sir, but I can tell you right off the top of my head that
there’s nobody by that name staying here. There’s Mr Fairbrother in 412, but
that’s about the nearest.’

‘Is this some kind
of
Goddamned
stupid joke?’ Charlie roared, and an
elderly couple who had just appeared out of the elevator stared at him in shock
and alarm.

‘Mr McLean,’
the bell captain retorted toughly, ‘I’ve got to warn you to keep your voice
down.

Shouting isn’t
going to get anybody anyplace.’

Charlie leaned
across the desk and jabbed at the bell captain’s uniformed chest with his
finger.

‘You listen to
me, wise-ass. I came here last night with my son Martin and I spent the night
here with a lady called Ms Velma Farloe while my son slept in 109. This morning
my son is gone and so is Ms Farloe. All I need to know from you is when my son
left and where Ms Farloe is.

Otherwise I’m
not just going to talk to the
manager,
I’m going to
talk to the police.’

The bell
captain lifted both hands in taunting surrender. ‘I’m sorry, Mr McLean. What
can I tell you? There’s no record of your son having arrived here. There’s no
sign of him now; and there’s no sign of Ms – what did you say her name was?’

At that moment
the manager arrived. He was tall, vague,
distant
, with
a drawling Bostonian accent and a flaccid double chin like an elderly pelican.
He listened to Charlie’s story as if Charlie were trying to sell him a new
brand of industrial floor cleaner. His dry, rutted fingernails played an
impatient tattoo on the countertop, and then at last he said, ‘I’m sorry, sir.
I can’t help you. If there’s no hotel record that your son checked in here, and
if there’s no record that Ms Furlough checked in here
either
..
.
well
, you can understand our position.’

‘Yes, I do
understand your position,’ said Charlie furiously. ‘Your position is that for
some reason best known to yourselves you’re trying to fool me into thinking
that my son wasn’t even here last night, and that the woman with whom I spent
the night was some kind of figment of my imagination.’

The manager
smiled without warmth or interest. ‘You said it, sir, not me.’

Charlie said
tightly, ‘I want my son.’

The manager
didn’t reply, but beckoned the bell captain to lean over the desk toward him.
He whispered something into the bell captain’s ear and the bell captain nodded.

‘What was that
all about?’ Charlie demanded.

‘Nothing to do
with your son, sir,’ said the manager. ‘As I say, I’m very sorry, but we’re
unable to assist you.’

Charlie had
always scoffed at those Hollywood movies in which unscrupulous relatives try to
steal a woman’s fortune by driving her mad; but he could understand now how
quickly a person’s sense of reality could slip away. He walked away from the
reception desk for a moment in sheer exasperation; then he turned back again
and said, ‘Call the police.’

The bell
captain glanced at the manager, but the manager shrugged in agreement.
‘Of course.
It’s the only thing you can do. But can I ask
you one favour? Be discreet. The Windsor has a reputation to keep up.’

‘There’s
something else,’ said Charlie. ‘I want to talk to your maitre d’. He knows the
woman I stayed with last night.’

‘He won’t be
awake yet, sir. He doesn’t come on duty until eleven o’clock.’

‘Well, in that case,
I’m sorry. You’ll just have to disturb him. The police will want to see him
anyway.’

The manager
interlaced his fingers, and then said to the bell captain, ‘Put a call in to
Arthur. Tell him to meet me in my office in ten minutes.’ He turned back to Charlie
and said, ‘You will allow him ten minutes, sir, to dress?’

While he waited
for the police and for Arthur, Charlie went outside and walked around the hotel
parking lot. It must have been raining during the night. The air was cold and
damp and all the cars were bejewelled with raindrops. He opened up his own car
to see if Martin had left him a message on the steering wheel or the seat, but
there was nothing there at all. He slammed the car door and wiped the rain off
his hands with his handkerchief.

The police took
nearly fifteen minutes to arrive. Two deputies,
one middle
aged and as lean as a whippet, the other young and pudgy with close-bitten
nails. Charlie walked up to them as they parked outside the hotel, and said,
‘My name’s McLean. It’s my son who’s gone missing.’

The lean deputy
sniffed, wiped at his nose with his finger and looked around him. ‘You’ve
searched the hotel? He’s not hiding or anything? Little kids do that sometimes,
just to annoy their parents. Found one kid hiding in the trash once, all ready
to be collected and sent off to the dump.’

Charlie said,
‘He’s fifteen. He’s not a little kid.’

The lean deputy
made a face that was obviously meant to be interpreted as
Fifteen
?
What do you expect from a kid of fifteen? They’re always running away. It’s the
prime age for running away.

‘Want to give
me some kind of description?’ the lean deputy asked. His pudgy partner tugged
out a notebook and a stub of pencil and frowned at him expectantly.

‘He’s a
fifteen-year-old boy, that’s all.
Brown hair, brown eyes.
Slight build.
He’s probably wearing a pale blue
wind-breaker and Levi jeans.’

The pudgy
deputy assiduously wrote all this down while the lean deputy gritted his teeth
in imitation of Glint Eastwood and looked this way and that as if he expected a
sign from God or at least an imminent change in the weather! ‘When was the last
time you saw him?’ he asked.

‘Last night. I
don’t know, round about seven-thirty.’

‘Here, at the
Windsor?’

‘That’s right,
in the room we were sharing.’

The lean deputy
frowned. ‘If you were sharing a room with your son, how come the last time you
saw him was at seven-thirty yesterday evening?’

‘Because I spent the night in another room.’

‘You spent the
night in another room?’

‘I was sleeping
with a lady.’

The lean deputy
raised an eyebrow. ‘You were sleeping with a lady and when you returned to your
own room you found that your son was no longer there?’

‘That’s the nub
of it, yes.’

The pudgy
deputy scribbled in his notebook for a long time while the lean deputy peered
first to the northern horizon and then to the south.

At last, the
lean deputy said, ‘Did you have any family problems?’

Charlie shook
his head. ‘His mother and I are divorced, but there isn’t any hostility between
us.

His mother’s
taking a vacation right now, and so I agreed to bring him along with me. I’m a
restaurant
critic,
I travel around eating in
restaurants and writing reports.’

The lean deputy
nodded his head towards the entrance to the Windsor. ‘What do you think of this
place? Stinks, don’t it?’

‘Deputy, I’m
interested in finding my son, that’s all.’

‘Well,’ said
the deputy, ‘the whole point is that teenage disappearances are pretty much two
for a nickel these days. Kids have plenty of independence, plenty of money.
They’re smart, too. As soon as they’re old enough to strike out on their own,
they generally take the opportunity and do it. You can never tell when it’s
going to happen. Sometimes it happens after an argument, sometimes it just
happens.’

‘Thanks for the
sociological analysis,’ Charlie retorted.

The manager
came out and said coldly, ‘My maitre d’ is here, as you requested. I hope you
won’t be keeping him for very long. He has a full lunchtime schedule ahead of
him,
and a Lodge dinner at seven-thirty.’

Charlie didn’t answer,
but led the way back into the hotel. In the manager’s office, Arthur, the
maitre d’, was standing in green striped pyjamas and a maroon silk bathrobe
with stains on the belly. He was unshaven, although Charlie could smell that he
had already had a quick squirt of Binaca. He glared at Charlie with eyes like
freshly peeled grapes.