The Fat Innkeeper (25 page)

He wondered if Marisa had noticed those things. It didn’t look like it. The two of them were laughing together over something,
Skylar’s hand lightly touching her arm. He said something, and then squeezed her shoulder. Am was sure Skylar’s voice had
been worked on as much as his hair; it was deep, full-throated, and had a mysterious echo to it, as if it emerged from a great
cavern. He kept offering Marisa his white teeth. Probably capped, thought Am.

“When did you discover your gift?” asked Marisa.

“I will present you with my book,” he said. “It will tell you how I came from a family renowned throughout our country for
our powers.”

Why was it, Am wondered, that everyone they talked with seemed to have an autobiography on hand? Wasn’t it enough to have
a business card anymore?

“I’d rather hear it from you,” said Marisa. “It’s so much nicer hearing things firsthand.”

She giggled. She actually giggled. The woman knew how to flirt. Here she was, intelligent and motivated and self-directed
to write important words, and she knew how to flirt. To Am’s way of thinking, that didn’t seem right. To Skylar’s, it was
just fine.

“I will tell you anything,” he said. “Anything.”

She was as good at asking questions, thought Am, as she was at stroking Skylar’s immense ego. He watched her rope him in.
A man who was out for answers would have tossed the lasso and fought like hell to bring him down. She didn’t work that way.
Skylar was roped, caught, and tied up and he didn’t even know it.

“You have fans around the world,” she said.

“Everywhere,” he agreed.

“They must have been as disappointed as I was when that awful man said those lies about you. What kind of a world is it when
someone has to try and tear down a being of your stature just to make himself look good?”

“He’s dead!” said Skylar. The words were offered in glee, then slightly reconsidered. “I knew he would die,” he said.

Am wondered if Marisa was as short of breath as he was. “You did?” she asked.

“Yes. When he made up his… stories… three years ago, I sued him. And I foresaw…”

He touched his index fingers to his temples.

“… that he was going to die a tragic death because of what he had done.”

“What do you mean?” asked Marisa.

His large, dark eyes were hooded, cloaked by his eyelids. “Kismet,” he said.

“Kismet,” repeated Marisa.

“Allah punished him for his lies. And he did it right in front of me.”

Am couldn’t resist. “Right in front of you,” he said.

“Yes,” said Skylar dramatically. “The man died in this Hotel last night. And he thought he could laugh at me. I like that
old saying: He who laughs last, laughs best.”

“I can’t imagine anyone ever laughing at you,” said Marisa.

She missed her calling, thought Am. She should have been an actress. And then a nagging doubt: She wasn’t performing with
him,
was she?

“Just the night before last,” he said, “he had the nerve to challenge me in front of a crowd. I was on stage, halfway through
my demonstration, when he presented himself. I knew who he was right away. I wanted to call security and have him thrown out.
But I could not interrupt my mental exhibition.

“Standing beneath me, he called up a greeting, acted as if we were old friends. In a loud, mocking voice he said that he’d
be having a few magic shows of his own before the week was through. Then he looked at his watch, shook it a few times as if
it wasn’t working, and said he must be going, that he had a date with a deceitful destiny, or some such nonsense.”

“What an awful man,” said Marisa.

“He now tells his lies in hell. He had no idea what trouble his evil would bring him, and couldn’t know that by attacking
me he wrote his own epitaph. My enemies all die horrible and mysterious deaths.”

“Dr. Kingsbury wasn’t the first of your enemies to die in a suspicious manner?” asked Am.

Skylar smiled, as if remembering fond memories. Any potential answer was interrupted by a knock at the door. Skylar let a
room-service waiter enter. On his tray was a pot of coffee. The server was surprised that Skylar had company.

“I can get more cups, sir,” he said.

“That is not necessary,” said Skylar in a magnanimous voice. “I have extras.”

The waiter nodded and left. “Will you have some coffee?” Skylar asked Marisa.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It is a special Turkish blend,” he said. “I have it served to me after my last nightly demonstration everywhere I go. Some
people say they can’t sleep if they drink coffee. I find I can’t if I don’t drink it. Cream? Sugar?”

She shook her head. “That is how I like it,” said Skylar. “Leaded, as I hear some people say. Or in this case, super-leaded.”

He handed Marisa her cup, and then poured himself one. They both sipped appreciatively.

“Excuse me,” said Am, then pantomimed his own cup.

Skylar sighed, then poured. “With cream and sugar, if you don’t mind,” added Am.

The mentalist did, but provided them anyway. Skylar was sipping, and looking into Marisa’s eyes, when Am spoke again. “And
a spoon, please.”

Skylar didn’t disguise the malevolence in his look. He was not a man who liked to be interrupted. To challenge him, he had
said, was dangerous.

He handed over a spoon. Am thanked him, and started to stir, then noticed the metal was twisted, bent in half.

On Skylar’s profile, Am noticed, was the smallest of smiles.

“So,” said Cleo, “what you’re really saying is that I haven’t been arrested.”

Jimmy nodded. “I kinda thought you just needed to get away for a little while and think about what you’re doing
to
yourself.”

They were sitting in the employee’s cafeteria drinking coffee. Cleopatra’s eyes looked as if they had a permanent puffiness
to them. She kept sniffling, and Jimmy kept offering
her napkins.

“But we just came here for a getaway,” she said. Then, emphatically: “It was supposed to be romantic.”

“Romantic to me,” said Jimmy, “is walking along the beach at sunset hand in hand with my special lady. Romantic to me is dancing
by moonlight. Romantic to me is finding a special view and sharing it with a special someone.”

He gave her a clueing look. She could be that special someone. Not that Jimmy had ever done any of those romantic things he
had described. Up until now he had never even thought about doing them. Most of his relationships had been short-lived. For
some reason the women he had dated hadn’t liked staying up all night getting the sporting scores from around the country.

“All of that sounds nice to me,” admitted Cleo.

“I know a special view,” he said. Mount Soledad, he was thinking. From there you could see half the world, but most people
just went up there to make out.

She reached over and patted his hand. “You’ve been very special to me,” she said. “But I’m in a relationship.”

“One relationship I could understand,” said Jimmy, “but multiple…” He shook his head.

“What do you mean?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

Jimmy looked at her. She really didn’t. It was worse than he had thought. “Your boyfriend’s trying to get you involved with
a bunch of swingers.”

“Swingers?”

“Adam and Eve and Dawn and Steve. Mate-swappers.”

With total incredulity, she said, “You’re wrong.”

“I wish I was. They call themselves the Swap Meat.”

“Bradford is not a—a—swinger,” she said. “He has been as upset about everything as I have.”

“He didn’t look too upset back in the room.”

Like most low blows, it worked. A thoughtful look came over Cleo’s face. She remembered their initial meeting with the other
couple. Could it have been planned? Did that other man actually think that she… ? How disgusting. How absolutely repugnant.
Cleo stopped accepting napkins. She was mad.

“I don’t believe any of this,” she said.

Words invariably uttered, Jimmy knew, by those who did believe.

They sat discussing murder in the Lobby Lounge. Bars that are located directly off hotel lobbies traffic mostly in the captive-audience
market and the spontaneous-purchase category, with guests either waiting to get into their rooms, or wanting to get a drink
without having to bother going very far. It was a better place than most to be discussing murder. The Lobby Lounge was very
tropical, with lots of green foliage, running water, and fountains. Maybe there was too much water. Marisa had excused herself
three times to go to the bathroom. On her most recent outing she had explained, not a little embarrassed, that “the running
water keeps giving me less than subliminal messages.”

It was almost midnight. The lounge wasn’t very crowded, but it wasn’t a place to hide either. It was a spot to see, and be
seen, with only floral barriers between the loungers and the lobby. Am was drinking a mineral water. One cup of Skylar’s Turkish
coffee had been enough electroshock therapy for the night. He’d tried to return the mentalist’s favor, had left him a somewhat
unbent spoon.

The cocktail server interrupted Am’s thoughts. “Would you like another?” she asked.

“Uh, no, thanks,” Am said, his smile covering up for his having been startled.

It was slow, so she wasn’t in any rush to leave. Am looked at her name tag, confirming the first name he wasn’t sure of. Tracy,
it said, and in smaller letters, Mission Viejo, California. She’d been at the Hotel for less than a year. Am remembered they
had talked one time about her graduate studies at San Diego State.

“Did you have a good night?” he asked.

“The good thing is my shift is almost over,” she said. “I have a date with a hot bath.”

“I think I have that same date.”

“Will your friend want a refill?”

Marisa was drinking cranberry juice. A diuretic, as if she needed one. Her glass was still half-full. Am was afraid the sight
of a full glass might immediately send her back to the bathroom.

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll close out the bill whenever you’re ready.”

“Thought you might say that,” she said. Tracy presented the bill on a little tray with two peppermints.

“Enjoy your bath,” he told her.

“You, too,” she said.

He looked at the bill, and not for the first time was glad he didn’t have to pay the Hotel prices. Because he was entertaining
someone from the Fourth Estate, he would charge this to advertising and promotion. The Hotel policy afforded the servers only
an eight-percent gratuity on such accounts, so Am added a few dollars of his own. He placed the bills atop the bar charge.
Just a few hours back, he remembered, he had been examining Dr. Kingsbury’s bar charges. Come to think of it, one of the doctor’s
tabs had come from the Lobby Lounge.

Tracy was talking with the bartender, and Am had to use all but semaphore flags to get her attention. She casually made her
way back to him. “What do you need?” she asked. “Bubble bath?”

He fished through a pile of papers, came up with a recent picture of Dr. Thomas Kingsbury. “Wonder if either you or Dave recognize
this man.”

Tracy didn’t need to show the picture to the bartender. “He came in here late the other night,” she said. “Was sitting right
about where you’re sitting.”

“Was he alone?”

“No. He was joined by a woman.”

“What did she look like?”

“Platinum blond. Good-looking. She was at least twenty years younger than he was. Not his daughter, though.”

They never were. “Did you hear any of their conversation?”

“No. They wanted to be alone.”

“How would you describe their mood?”

“Happy. He was rather jovial. He ordered several shots of Goldschlager Schnapps.”

“I’m not familiar with that drink.”

“The yuppies like it. It’s damned expensive, and for a reason. There’s actual flakes of gold in the bottle.”

“No!”

“I’ll show you.”

Tracy went back to the bar just as Marisa returned to the table. In the time it took to explain his inquiry Tracy reappeared with the bottle. She also had two full shot glasses.

“Dave signed these to the management folio as an educational tasting,” Tracy said.

Am raised an eyebrow, then gave a dubious wave of thanks to Dave. He hated to think how many red flags would be raised if
his own day at the Hotel were tracked through receipts. It would be tough enough to explain everything, and he was alive.
Poor Kingsbury wasn’t.

Marisa shook the bottle and held it up. Golden flakes rained down through the amber liquid.

“It reminds me of Christmas,” said Marisa.

“Christmas?”

“The day after Thanksgiving we’d always bring out our Christmas boxes. I couldn’t wait to play with the snow domes.”

“Snow domes?”

Marisa excitedly demonstrated with her hands. “You know,” she said, “the glass domes you shake and then the snow falls down.”

Ah, he thought. His family had called them water globes, but like Marisa’s, they had also brought them out for the holidays.
The winter scenes were as close as he ever got to snow growing up in San Diego. Am looked at the bottle. She was right; when
it was stirred up it reminded him of the globes, save that these were golden flakes, not snowflakes, and they didn’t fall
on carolers, and chalets, and ice skaters; they were supposed to fall down upon open throats, not open sleighs.

They thanked Tracy, handed her back the bottle of Goldschlager, then raised their own shot glasses. The gold flakes had settled
at the bottom, but when they clicked glasses the gold rose and dispersed. They downed the contents in a gulp. The schnapps
kicked in from the gullet on down.

“Phew,” said Marisa. “That’s what I call a real gold rush.”

Am felt the same way. The liquor packed a punch. He looked at his glass, and noticed some gold flakes clinging to its side.

“ ‘Saint-seducing gold,’ “ he said, quoting from Shakespeare, but remembering neither the play nor the scene.

A few gold flakes also clung to Marisa’s glass. “I suppose these are dregs we should drink,” she said.