talks to Leo inside the suite while I have a chat with Pazzano in the hall. It’s four a.m., we’ve agreed to show up at the station in the morning for a more detailed statement. Right now, all Pazzano wants are the basics: when did we leave, when did we come back, who was she? That’s the question that hits the hardest. Past tense. She was. She isn’t any longer.
Raquel. Mendez. Raquel Esperanza Mendez. She lived up there. She had her own suite. She was Leo’s housekeeper. I don’t know if she had any family. I don’t know if she and Leo had “a thing.”
My own questions are met with the usual police reticence. The body hasn’t been recovered from the construction site, no identification, and no motorcyclists have been apprehended, and when we know, you’ll know. Maybe. I won’t hold my breath.
After Mooney and Pazzano quit for the night I check on Leo. He’s taking off his tux and putting on a hotel robe.
“I’ll need a suit for the morning,” he says.
“I’ll get it, sir,” I say.
“In the morning.”
“Yes, sir. Just tell me what you want.”
“In the morning,” he says.
“Are you going to be all right in here? Raymond says he can move you into the Ambassador Suite tomorrow.”
“You get some sleep, Joseph.”
“I could stick around, sir, if you want to talk or anything.”
“No. I’d rather be alone now.”
As I head for the door he stops me without raising his voice.
“Joseph?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I need to know who did this.”
“The police will take care of it, I’m sure,” I say. “It looks like a robbery that went sour.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe that’s what happened.”
The lobby is almost deserted — exhausted late arrivals checking in, a vacuum cleaner pushed along the far wall. The police presence is evident but low-key — one marked cruiser still near the entrance, one further down the block. I feel weary. My knee hurts. Too much dancing probably.
Gritch follows me around as I climb out of the overpriced soup and fish that I can’t imagine ever wearing again.
“Might want to get those pants sponged and pressed,” says Gritch.
“I suppose.”
“Tiny perfect newswoman gone home?”
“She has,” I say. “Unless she decides to do a special report from the front steps.”
“Think this will be a big story?”
“Not to her,” I say. “She’d rather be dodging RPGs around Kandahar.”
“Damn,” Gritch says. “I never checked back on that limo driver.”
“It can wait,” I say. “I’m hoping there’s nothing.”
“You mention it to the cops?”
“No.”
“You going to mention it to the cops?”
“Sure. Sooner or later,” I tell him.
“What are you being coy about?”
“I’m being careful. I don’t know what’s going on with Leo. Has he got himself into something? We still haven’t had a straight talk about any of this.”
“You know anything about the demon biker you haven’t told the cops?”
“Nope. Strangers in the night,” I say. “I know he was in a hurry to get out of there.”
“Don’t blame him,” says Gritch. “I don’t like people unexpectedly dropping in either.”
As I’m hanging up my jacket I feel the extra weight in the pocket. Three fine cigars sheathed in leather, and a heavy gold lighter.
“Check the other pocket,” says Gritch. “Maybe there’s a ham sandwich.”
Gritch and I sit for a while in my “private space,” the small office between the main office and my living quarters. I sit at Louis Schurr’s old desk, in his creaky oak chair with the one wobbly castor, and Gritch sits on a chair that he drags in. We light up a hundred dollars’ worth of Cohibas and fill the confines with expensive smog.
“All connected, right? Gotta be.” Gritch is being hypothetical. “Two is coincidence, three is conspiracy. What they say. Got the trashed award plaque thingy, got The Case of the Missing Ponytail, and then there’s —” I know what just went through his head … the first two are absurd, the last was tragic. “— what happened upstairs,” he finishes carefully.
“Could be connected,” I say.
“Damn right could be. And don’t forget what happened seven years ago, eight years ago. That could be connected. Whoever did that is still running around loose.”
“As far as we know,” I say.
“We know diddly. Except we know nobody got arrested for that little caper, and we know Leo was still being careful about something, otherwise why would he drag your carcass to a fancy-dress ball?”
“He was tense. All evening,” I say. “He handled it well but I could tell. Like he was waiting for something.”
“Been waiting for the other shoe to drop for eight years,” says Gritch.
Eight years ago.
Leo didn’t come to see me. I would have checked myself out of the hospital by the third day but he insisted that I take my time. His personal GP was keeping an eye on me. Madge Killian bounced in with flowers and a fruit basket and magazines. She seemed really proud of me, kept patting me on my good shoulder. She told me that Leo had arranged for someone named Wallace Gritchfield to provide security for me.
“He should keep it for himself,” I say. “Until whoever did it is caught.”
“He’s in a secure location,” she says. “He wants you to come and see him when Dr. Markle releases you. Not a day before.”
“I will,” I say.
Wallace Gritchfield didn’t look like a bodyguard. He was short, round, balding, and looked like he’d stopped a few pucks with his nose over the years.
“Hi,” he says. “Call me Gritch. Leo wants me to park myself in the hall overnight, make sure nobody tries to finish the job. ‘Course if they come through the window, you’re screwed.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary. They weren’t after me.”
“If he really thought you were in danger he’d have a platoon of rent-a-cops at the main entrance. The old man doesn’t fool around.”
“You work for him?”
“I do security at the hotel.”
“What hotel is that?” I ask.
I didn’t know much about the Lord Douglas back then. I’d never stayed there. It was out of my price range. My manager, Morley Kline, liked to have a drink in the Press Club once in a while, shoot the breeze with the sportswriters, Hap Reynolds sometimes gave us a promo for an upcoming fight. I guess the hotel was showing her age, had faded somewhat from her heyday. Still, she had that look, the look that grand hotels have — a lobby as big as a ballroom, lofty as a cathedral, crystal chandeliers, washroom attendants, and mahogany doors on the water closets. If the Persian rugs had a wide pathway worn from entrance to elevators, and the leather sofa cushions sagged a little in the middle, there was no mistaking