The Hotel Detective
THER
N
OVELS BY
A
LAN
R
USSELL
The Forest Prime Evil
No Sign of Murder
Copyright © 1994 by Alan Russell
All rights reserved.
Originally published in hardcover by Mysterious Press
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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www.HachetteBookGroup.com
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56565-3
To Sully—who laughed too hard at my hotel anecdotes. And to Marc and Kirk, good friends for a long, long time.
And to everyone who has ever worked in a hotel, especially to those who worked at the Sea Lodge at La Jolla Shores during
my tenure there as manager.
Contents
There was a part of Am Caulfield’s consciousness that knew this was Scrooge time, a time when the spirits took him to his
past. The vision came to him as more than a dream. It was as if he lived once more through his entrée into the hotel world.
Am’s dreamscape always brought him to 1972 and the Pelican Inn, when he was eighteen, and life was the next wave, and immortality
was a good set.
“Graveyard’s usually quiet,” said Mr. Wells, the general manager.
The GM’s body was fifty, but his eyes were more bloodshot than not and looked a little older than Methuselah’s.
“You just gotta stay awake,” he said. “You’ll take bags, answer the phone, do rounds. Whatever. Just show up. The night auditor
will tell you what to do.”
Third person, Am watched his head do a “red, red, robin,” but Mr. Wells was more interested in scratching his beard than in
acknowledging any posturing. The GM’s five o’clock shadow belied the half-past-noon time. Only his world-weariness matched
the time frame of his beard.
“No drinking. No drugs. You'll be gone faster than a hotel towel if I even suspect you. At night you got a lot of rope to
play with. Don't hang yourself.”
Wells tossed a brochure at Am. In his dream, Am tried to will himself to catch the brochure this time, but again he missed.
“Read,” the GM said. “Tells you about the place. Guests are going to ask you questions. Nothing I hate more than the answer
'I don't know.' Our guests don't pay to hear a stupid parrot imitation. You got any idea of what a room goes for here?”
Am caught himself just before doing that parrot imitation. “Plenty,” he ventured.
“Damn right,” said Wells. “But that's not something I'll have to remind you about. They'll remind you.”
If Hitchcock had made the movie of Am's dream, he would have echoed those words, probably put organ music around the “they'll.”
Wells closed his eyes and for a minute didn't talk. When he finally broke his silence, his eyes remained shut. “One hundred
and twelve rooms, kid. Couple hundred people staying the night sometimes. This is called the hospitality industry. Contradiction
in terms, I've always said, but what the hell. Home away from goddamn sweet home.”
Wells lifted one eyelid, looked at Am, then said, “Welcome to the wonderful world of hotels, kid.”
There was a shifting in Am's dream, a slight awakening, an acknowledgment among some of his synapses that he was looking back.
Am had never pictured himself as being a part of a historical photo, of looking—quaint. Everyone wants to think they're the
latest model—not a Model T. In 1972 there was a naiveté to the hotel business, a ma-and-pa sensibility to the trade, at least
in San Diego, which was still a backwater city then. Nixon and the Republican National Convention were set to come to town
that year, or were before somebody who could count realized that San Diego didn't have enough hotel rooms and facilities to
handle the event. That changed the course of history. Watergate would never have happened in San Diego. Back then the city
was on military time and was used to letting its sleeping sacred cows lie.
The window of Proust passed. Am Caulfield, again submerged back into Scrooge time and his first night on the job, remembered
how he had reported to work a half hour early. The night auditor knew better than that. He made his entrance at 10:59 P.M.,
grunted out something that might have been a greeting, then started counting the cash drawer. Bill was about forty, had a
pallor that a ghost would have envied, thick glasses, and oily hair that called out for a premium shampoo. While he punched
in figures, the clerk and the PBX operator were silent. He commanded that kind of respect. They knew they were in the presence
of a maestro of the audit, of someone who knew more about hotels in his unconscious fingers than they could ever imagine.
Or would want to imagine. Everyone watched as Bill's fingers danced over the ten-key. In less than a minute he had his tallies
finished. He looked up to the expectant clerk and nodded his head once.
“Nothing to report, Bill,” the clerk said, already halfway out the door. “Except you got a new night man.”
In his bed Am stirred uncomfortably, felt the spotlight turn on him again.
The clerk gave Am a sympathetic glance, said that he hadn't caught his name, but then he didn't stay to hear it, either. Bill
apparently wasn't keen on introductions. He held up his hands before Am could speak.
“Stay here six months and then I'll learn your name,” he said. “This last year I trained five new people. I'm tired of learning
goddamn new names.” He scowled. “Ever work in a hotel?” he asked with the slightest bit of hope in his voice.
Am shook his head.
“Christ,” said Bill. “Another virgin.”
There is no harsher word than “virgin” to an inexperienced young man. The embarrassment traveled through the years, through
the dream. Am was still grateful that Bill didn’t observe his red face. The auditor was already immersed in his work, pushing
buttons on a large machine that the clerk had introduced as the 4200.
Ker-chunk,
went the 4200. Bill fed it folios and hit more buttons, while Am listened to
ker-chunks.
Bill’s speed with the machine made the front desk sound more like a canning factory than a hotel. Between his postings, he
finally deigned to talk to Am.
Ker-chunk.
“Take this pager and take a walk,” he said.
Kerchunk.
“Familiarize yourself with the hotel.”
Ker-chunk.
“Find a bellman’s cart, and if you get a check-in, pretend you know your ass from a hole in ground.”
Kerchunk.
“Come back in an hour. I’ll have finished posting room and tax by then.”
There wasn’t much difference between dream rounds and what had been actual rounds. Am again felt like a big shot. This was
a real job, with real responsibilities, not like mowing lawns. His footsteps sounded loud, important. One hundred and twelve
guest rooms, he thought, and in them all sorts of people. At eighteen, hormones are usually more active than brain cells.
Am imagined that within all those rooms lurked women who wanted him desperately. His hour away from the desk passed quickly.
When he returned, it was clear Bill hadn’t missed him.
Sighing, Bill drew himself away from some figures he was scrutinizing, then pointed to the switchboard. The Japanese hadn’t
microprocessed the world back then. The Pelican Inn had a cord board. Bill grudgingly started to explain its workings. His
teaching methods wouldn’t have gotten him nominated for educator of the year.
“Use the inside cords for incoming calls,” he said, “and use the outside cords to connect them to the extension they want.
Before connecting calls, check to see if the extension is busy. You do that by testing the line. It makes a little static
sound if it’s busy. Got it?”
Bill’s thick glasses magnified his hard snake eyes. They captured Am, mesmerized him into nodding. The phone rang, and Am
reached for a cord. Wrong cord. He was pushed aside and heard Bill mutter something about God and brains and trains before
he answered the call, “Good evening, the Pelican Inn.”
When Bill explained the routine a second time, he exaggerated his speech in a slow and sarcastic manner. Bill asked Am if
he knew his ABCs and said that most of the staff didn’t. Then he showed Am where the phone rack was and how to look up the
guest names. When Am returned to his work he felt a little more confident. With each call handled successfully, Am’s assuredness
increased exponentially. After half an hour’s work, Am felt ready to lecture Alexander Graham Bell on telephones. It was about
that time the guest came to the desk.
He was white and perspiring, exhibiting textbook signs of shock. He looked at Am, stuttered a few unintelligible words, then
managed to light a cigarette with shaky hands.
“The p-phone,” he said.
Even in his dream, Am remembered the feeling. It was something akin to when a plane encounters turbulence and your stomach
drops with the vessel. Am desperately looked for Bill, but the auditor had moved to the side of the front desk, out of sight
of the guest. He was watching what was going on with interest. Later, Am was to learn that Bill was fascinated by car crashes.
“What about the phone, sir?” Am asked.
The guest took a long pull on his cigarette, but it didn't help relax him. “I was talking with my girlfriend,” he said. “She
was ready to come over here. We were giggling and laughing. And then suddenly my wife was on the line.
“My wife.”
He looked to Am for an explanation. Self-preservation camouflaged Am's face. Too late Am remembered about checking the lines
to see if they were busy.
The man inhaled on his cigarette again, sucked for dear life. “It was my worst nightmare,” he said. “My wife, my girlfriend,
and me, all on the same line. I started yelling that we must have a crossed connection. I told everyone to hang up. And then
I hung up.”
Am sneaked a look at Bill. He wanted to believe that the worst was past. But Bill's rapt expression, and the way he was settling
in, clued Am that there was to be more. Bill knew his pileups.
The man tried to smoke, but his hands were shaking so much that he had trouble bringing the cigarette to his lips.
“I picked up the phone a few seconds later. I was going to call my wife. I was going to explain. But she was still on the
line. And so was my girlfriend. They were talking. It was like a nightmare out of hell. I couldn't get them to stop talking.
I couldn't get them to hang up. For all I know, they might still be talking.”
The man looked at Am, the pain clearly on his face. Like Job, he wanted an explanation for his suffering, for having to pay
the penance of being human. “What happened?” he whispered.
Another Am came out then, a person he didn't know existed. With a pained face, Am said, “Who knows? That damned phone company.
That goddamn phone company.” Am shook his head in disgust and offered the guest a reassuring look of sympathy. The man took
Am's alms and echoed his curse.
“That goddamn phone company,” he said. He finished his cigarette in silence, stamped out the butt in an ashtray that Am offered,
then left the desk. As soon as he was out of sight, Am disconnected all the active cords at the switchboard. He didn't care
that he was terminating several conversations. He knew the callers could ring back and also knew that this time he'd check
for a busy signal.