Smart Moves (4 page)

At my age I would normally be flattered to be mistaken for a soldier, but I have seen some pretty old privates in the last two years. I had a feeling that if I wanted to go out and get a license to kill Japanese, the Marines might overlook my greying hairs, and wink when I lied about my age. My bad back might give me away somewhere down the line but male bodies were in short supply for this war. “No uniform, no reservation,” I said. “I’m here on business.”

“I’m afraid if you have no reservation …” he began.

“Maybe you should be,” I said with a grin, leaning forward. Two women were now lined up behind me, paying no attention to our conversation. Theirs was going strong.

“A client of mine wants me to stay in this hotel,” I said. “He and I are going to be working here. He’ll be very disappointed if I don’t get a room.”

I pulled Einstein’s check out of my pocket and handed it to the clerk, who was, I’m sure, considering a call for help in getting rid of me.

“I don’t …” he began, without looking at the check in front of him.

“I do and it hasn’t stunted my growth,” I said. “Just look at the signature on that check.”

He looked. Then he looked again. “I’ll have to have this authenticated,” he said, looking up with new respect.

“Authenticate, validate, send someone over to the bank. I’ll wait right here while you do,” I said as pleasantly as I could, turning to smile politely at the three women. They were all well-dressed, hair piled neatly up off their ears, dangling earrings, white billowy blouses with frilly collars. One of the women was a little pudgy. A second was tall, stylish, and formless. The third was about forty and just right. I fell in love with her and would have been content to spend the next hour or so watching her and listening to the three women discuss where they were going to have lunch.

“Are you going to be long?” asked the tall one, the obvious leader. Something about me fixed a polite, masked smile of distaste on her regal face, maybe the air of lunchtime onions on my breath.

“I don’t know,” I said, looking at the cute one, who looked away. She reminded me of my ex-wife, Anne. “Are we going to be long?” I asked the clerk.

He looked at Einstein’s check, made a decision, and said, “No. I’ll just check you in.”

“Peters, Toby Peters,” I supplied and then added, to hear how it sounded to me and the waiting ladies, “Professor Peters.”

“Professor Peters,” he said. “I’ll check on this … check while you make yourself comfortable.”

“I’m sure Professor Einstein will appreciate it,” I said, loud enough for the three women to hear. “Please cash the check for me after you make your calls, and have a bellboy bring the money up to my room.”

New respect was in the eyes of the three women when I turned to hand my suitcase to another ancient bellhop.

“You know Albert Einstein?” asked the tall one.

“Albert? Yes, we’re working together on supportive energy dysfunctions,” I said, waving at the bellboy to lead the way.

The pretty one who reminded me of Anne touched her right ear. I’d remember that forever.

“Is it secret?” she asked, her shrill voice breaking the spell.

“Science stuff,” I whispered, putting my face close to hers. She was wearing perfume that smelled like a flower I couldn’t place but knew I had smelled as a child.

I followed the bellhop and behind me heard,

“… always a bit eccentric …”

“… but he didn’t look like …”

“… you can’t tell by how they …”

And then the old guy and I were in the elevator. We were alone with the elevator operator, a woman with a uniform like the old guy’s. He told her to take us to five and up we went.

“You really a scientist?” the old guy asked, shifting my suitcase from his left to his right hand and then resting it on the floor.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think,” he said. “I make my living on tips. You think too much and you say something that can get you in trouble. I just want the day to go by fast and the tips to be respectable.”

“I’ve got one for you,” I said, looking at the elevator operator, who appeared to be deaf as we shot by two and three. “War will be over in a year.”

“That kind of tip won’t buy me Bull Durham,” he said with a sigh. “World is full of comedians. Everyone thinks he’s Jack Benny. I live in the Bronx. We’ve got blackout drills now. Blackout drills. So war jokes don’t tickle me. I’m not complaining. You want to tell jokes, I’m a good listener, but not for the war jokes. Aside from that, the guest is always right.”

“Except when he’s wrong,” mumbled the elevator operator as the elevator snapped to a stop. “Five.”

The doors slid open but we were about a foot shy of level. She inched the elevator up and missed by almost six inches. That was good enough for me but not for her. She motioned me back when I tried to step off. About two minutes later we were reasonably within target for her to let the bellhop and me debark. Lights were flashing on the elevator board next to her.

“Good help is hard to find,” the bellhop commented, nodding at the closing doors of the elevator as he headed down the corridor. “They’re lucky guys like me are willing to go back to work.”

“You and the FBI,” I said.

He walked ahead, shaking his head. He wasn’t about to try to figure out an insane guest, especially one who made war jokes and nutty comments about the FBI. The corridor was quiet and dark, the carpet a deep brown with grey vases, wearing away from a generation of shod feet. In front of 514 the bellhop put down the suitcase and opened the door.

The room was small, clean, with a view of another hotel from the window. The bellhop put the suitcase down and said, “Have a good stay in New York.”

I handed him two quarters, which he pocketed without looking, handing me the room key.

A hot bath and a toothbrushing later and I was in my shorts, lying on the bed and considering my next move when a knock came. The guy at the door tried not to look at my scarred body as he handed me an envelope with
TAFT HOTEL
printed in the corner. Behind him a maid stepped forward to hand me a bowl of fruit covered by green cellophane. “The management would like to apologize for any inconvenience,” the man said with a fixed smile, touching his Wildrooted hair to be sure it wasn’t inconvenient.

“No trouble,” I said, resisting the urge to scratch my stomach.

“If there is anything you need to make your stay more comfortable, Professor Peters, just call the desk and ask for Calvin or Alexander.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, taking note and fruit. “I’ll really do that, Calvin.”

“Alexander,” he corrected.

“Alexander, yes,” I said, pushing the door closed.

The envelope contained cash from my Einstein check and a note welcoming me to the Taft. I put the cash in my wallet after picking my pants up off the floor and spent the next few hours coming up with no good plan while I ate Florida oranges.

Just before three I took my suit into the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and went back into the room, closing the bathroom door behind me. By four, when I checked, the bathroom was at the level of a zero-visibility fog, but my suit was wrinkle-free. It was also damp, but I was the only one who would know that. After checking to see that I didn’t need a shave, I dressed in the soppy suit and went down to the lobby. There was a new clerk at the desk and the woman who reminded me of Anne was nowhere in sight. I hadn’t really expected her. I went up to the new clerk, who was as neatly dressed as the morning clerk and a decade older, his hair nearly white. I hung around the lobby, watching him and the passing parade until the desk was patron-free, then strode up, looking as respectable as my body allowed.

“My name is Peters,” I said. “Professor Peters. I’m in five-fourteen.”

“Yes, Professor Peters,” the man said with a false-toothed smile. “I was informed that you were here.”

“I was wondering,” I said confidentially, “if you could do me a small favor.”

“Anything at all,” he beamed.

“I’d like to examine the registration books for the past three weeks,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Mr.…”

“Sudsburry,” he replied.

“Sudsburry,” I said, as if savoring the name. “This is a delicate matter which I’d rather not explain. You understand, I hope.”

“No,” grinned Sudsburry. “I can’t say that I do, Professor Peters, but it really doesn’t matter if I understand or not. I simply can’t let you examine the hotel register. I hope you understand.”

I understood. I’ve filled in for enough house dicks to know that you didn’t let jealous husbands or process servers kick up cow pies in your corridors, at least not in reasonably respectable hotels.

“If you’ll just tell me who you are looking for,” he said amiably, “perhaps I can tell you if they are registered and what room they might be in.”

Applause broke out behind us. I assumed it wasn’t because of his performance but the end of a piano roll in the Tap Room across the lobby.

“It’s a signature,” I explained.

“And this has some scientific importance?”

“Yes,” I said emphatically.

“What?” he asked reasonably.

“Professor Einstein’s son is missing,” I explained. “Break-down. We think he might be hiding in the hotel under an assumed name. The pressure on him has been enormous what with the war and … you know. Professor Einstein and I have been very concerned about him.”

Sudsburry’s smile was fixed and tolerant.

“Hans Albert Einstein is in Zurich,” Sudsburry said.

“Zurich?”

“Zurich, Switzerland,” said Sudsburry. “Pardon me, Professor, but are you sure it’s Einstein’s son who is under pressure?”

“We’re all under great pressure,” I said. “How do you know that …”

“… Hans Albert is in Zurich? The radio.”

“Thank you. Professor Einstein will be very relieved, very relieved. Zurich, you say?”

“Zurich, I say,” said Sudsburry. “Now if you will excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.”

He went back to work and I went into the Tap Room to see what all the applause was about and to plot a new strategy.

I considered stealing Sudsburry’s false teeth for simple revenge and trying my luck with the night clerk for possible results, but I had the feeling that a Taft rule was a Taft rule. I ordered a Rheinhold beer in a big glass at the bar and looked around for Charlie Drew to amuse me, but it was too early for professional entertainment. Some sailors were at the piano. One was playing, the other two singing. They were all young, all awful. The handful of people in the Tap Room loved them. The gallant gobs messed up a medley of show tunes and forgot the words to “After You’ve Gone,” but the afternoon drinkers went wild and asked for more. If there weren’t a war on, they would have been ordered to leave by the management, but they were having fun. I tried not to feel like Baby Snooks’ Daddy, but I had gone through some rough nights in a few hotels with kids like this who wanted trouble, and something to remember before they sailed out to be shot at and maybe killed.

“Not bad,” said a woman, sitting next to me. With a quick glance, she looked all right. A second glance, even in the dark, put her near my age and carrying a lot of memories.

“Not bad,” I agreed, finishing off the beer and wiping my mouth.

“Alone?” she asked.

“But not lonely,” I said. “How about I buy what you’re drinking, I have another beer, and we listen to the aquatic Mills Brothers before I take off for work?”

“I’ll settle for that,” she said with a grin that made it clear she had been this route too. “Make it Scotch on the rocks, but not too many rocks. We don’t want a shipwreck. I’ve got to get to work myself.”

The bartender indicated that he had heard the conversation and showed up with the drinks, as the trio did to “I Guess I’ll Have to Dream the Rest,” what we’d all like to see them do to the Nazi fleet. We all clapped our hands and I launched into my second beer, feeling better about them and our chances of coming out of the war a winner.

“You got a problem?” the woman said, the slight tinge of a South-of-the-Border accent in her question.

“I’m working on one,” I admitted as one of the people in the darkness called for “Old Rocking Chair’s Got Me.” The sailors obliged with a heavy dose of dah-de-days in place of Hoagy Carmichael’s words.

“Maybe I could help,” she said, looking into her glass at a melting ice cube.

“Don’t think so,” I said, considering a third beer.

As she returned to face me on her stool, the light from the bar hit her face, and either two beers or a new perspective said she wasn’t as old as I had thought. She looked as if she really wanted to help. There are people like that in the world. They sit around in bars, waiting to hear sad stories and give their sympathy and understanding. Most of them are women. I don’t know why.

“I’m a good listener,” she said. “I’m a professional listener. I’m on the switchboard of this hotel five nights a week, eight hours a night, listening to people, helping people. Makes me feel like …”

“… you’re helping people,” I supplied.

“Something like that,” she agreed.

“Maybe you can help me,” I said, moving my stool closer to hers. She smelled like Scotch and poppies. I motioned for another round and we talked. Three beers is my limit. I switched to Pepsi, punctuated by two trips to the men’s room.

Her name was Pauline Santiago. She lived in Brooklyn with a man named Paul, who may or may not have been her husband. Pauline and Paul seemed to have nothing in common but their first names. He was Polish. She was half Mexican and half Italian. He was a Republican. She was a Democrat. He grunted a lot. She talked too much.

“It’s an old story,” she said.

“But a true one,” I toasted with my Pepsi.

“True one,” she agreed, finishing off her third Scotch on the rocks.

“You’re going to walk out of here and go to work?” I said.

“Why not?” she asked, turning to see what was going on at the piano. A man in a tuxedo, who I guessed might be Charlie Drew come to amuse us, wanted to get to the keyboard. The three sailors were reluctant to give up their conquest. They might not be able to take Midway, but by God they were going to hold onto this enemy Steinway. Charlie protested, joked, pleaded, appealed to the crowd with no success and finally, in a fair but unconvincing display of support for our men in uniform, agreed to let them keep up their concert for a few more minutes.