Criminal Carma

CHAPTER SIX

Before I could turn my vulnerable back to the large bore of the.45, there was a knock at the half-open hall door and Reggie burst into the room carrying the tray I’d seen in the hallway. He had covered the dirty dishes with a white cloth napkin and tucked another napkin in the front of his pants so that it hung down like an apron.

“Room service,” he shouted.

The weightlifter half-turned, looking over his shoulder at Reggie, then glancing quickly back at me. He turned the gun away from me, holding it flat in front of his body so that Reggie couldn’t see it. “Put it down and get out,” he said.

“Where you want it?” Reggie said, panting a little bit. His face was red with excitement or exertion and I saw some lipstick on his right ear. At first glance, with the improvised apron, he looked a little like a waiter. At second glance, not so much.

The weightlifter was noticing that. As he turned for a better look, I dove toward him, tucking, doing a tight somersault on the thick carpet, and coming up to tackle him from a crouch with a lot of momentum. He clubbed me on top of the head with the.45 as he went down, loosening my grip on his waist. Stomping at me, he kicked free, still holding on to the gun. Dazed, I heard a loud crash as he scrambled to his feet, dishes shattering and metal dish covers clanging, then saw Reggie looming up behind him, metal serving tray raised high. The weightlifter spun toward the noise a split second too late, and Reggie brought the tray down on his head with a bong.

His muscular legs wobbled but held. As Reggie raised the tray for another blow, the weightlifter backfisted him with the.45, striking his forehead with the heavy barrel. Reggie dropped to his knees and the weightlifter reared back his right foot for a kick. I was up on one knee and grabbed his foot as it came back. Lifting and charging toward him as I got to my feet, I flipped him onto his head. His gun went flying and landed under the table near the hall door, which Reggie had left standing wide open. As the weightlifter scrambled after his piece, I dove on top of him, flattening him against the floor and knocking the wind out of him. Before he could recover, I got him in a stranglehold, my right forearm across his windpipe, right hand gripping my left bicep, left hand locked on the back of his head.

He was strong. He got up on his hands and knees and nearly bucked me off. He hit back over his shoulder with one hand and then the other, putting knots on my head, and crashed around, bashing my body against furniture and walls. But I kept his air cut off and after a minute or so I could feel him getting weaker. Finally, he stopped struggling. I kept the choke hold tight, grinding his trachea, not taking any chance in case he was playing possum.

“Less get outta here,” I heard Reggie say in a weak voice. The weightlifter was sprawled flat on the living room floor with his head near the hall door. I was lying full length on top of him. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Reggie leaning against the wall by the bedroom door. He was holding one of the cloth napkins to his forehead. It was red. Blood dripped from the end of his nose. “Too much noise,” he said.

I released the choke hold and sat up on the weightlifter’s back, which twitched and heaved as he started to breathe again with his face in the carpet. He smelled like the jocks I fought in high school: too much sweet cologne not quite covering up the stink of old sweat. Thinking about the beautiful, bewildered lady he had somehow gotten his hooks into and remembering the fear he made me feel, I grabbed his hair with my left hand, turned his head so that his face was exposed and slammed my right fist into his nose as hard as I could in a tight roundhouse. There was a crunching sound as bone and cartilage gave way and blood sprayed on my hand and forearm.

“What’s the meaning of this?”

Looking up, I saw the snowbird from downstairs filling the doorway. She was wearing a white terrycloth robe with the Oasis’s emerald-and-scarlet hummingbird logo perched on her tremendous bosom. Her hair was wrapped up in a white towel turban. A little man with a perfectly bald head and big ears was hopping around behind her, stretching out his scrawny neck and peeking around her bulk from one side and then the other, trying to see into the room.

“My husband didn’t pay top dollar to listen to this kind of ruckus! He won’t stand for it, do you hear me? What do you think you’re doing, anyway? What was all that crashing and banging?”

Thrusting his head in between his wife’s plump shoulder and the door-jamb, the bald man made a mean face. “Yeah, what gives?” He was wearing a hotel robe, too. It was way too big for him.

“I’m the head of hotel security,” I said, suppressing a nauseating surge of vertigo as I stood up, grabbing the couch to steady myself. “We caught this punk robbing a guest room. I apologize for the disturbance. Everything is under control now. Why don’t you go on back to your room and let us take care of this?”

“Don’t order me around!” the lady said. “My husband isn’t paying four hundred dollars a night for this malarkey!” Her suspicious little eyes were darting around in her head, cataloguing the disorder in the room. “Who’s he?” She nodded sharply in Reggie’s direction.

“He’s my associate, ma’am. I am very sorry you were disturbed. There won’t be any more trouble. But you are going to have to go back to your room and let us take care of this.”

The man’s bald head and big ears poked into the room on the other side of his wife. “Don’t order her around!” he said.

“I’m ordering both of you to get the hell out of here, right now!” I shouted, walking toward them, crowding them out of the doorway. “Go back to your room before I arrest you for interfering with a crime scene!”

The man’s shiny head disappeared, and the lady drew herself up with a look of outrage on her frying pan of a face.

“How dare you talk to my husband like that!” she yelled. “Come on, Dickey! We’ll see what the manager thinks about this. I’ve never been so insulted in all my born days. I’ll have that man’s job or know the reason why.” Her commentary trailed off as she sailed back down the hall to the open door of 569, a battleship with a dinghy in its wake. Her robe was stretched tight across her ass and shoulders. It stopped just below her knees and elbows, leaving massive calves and beefy-red forearms exposed. The husband looked like Dopey from the Seven Dwarfs in his robe, sleeves covering his hands to his fingertips, hem dragging the floor. Just before he went into their room and slammed the door, the little man looked back at me and made his mean face one more time, pulling his lips back and baring his teeth like a lap dog snarling at a German shepherd through a rolled-up car window.

“We got to get out of here,” Reggie said.

“No shit,” I said, passing him on my way into the bedroom. “How did he get by you?”

“He didn’t come past me, man.”

The jewelry case was lying twisted and broken by the bed. Someone had stepped or rolled on it during the fight. I saw one of the earrings near it and snatched it up. The necklace was nowhere in sight.

I looked under the bed and on the closet floor, then started searching through the broken dishes and debris.

“What the hell yuh doing?” Reggie said.

“I’m looking for the goddamn necklace,” I said. “Help me find it!”

The jewels were crystallized bliss, emotionally potent as pure rock cocaine. I was desperate to find them. But there were voices in the hall.

“I’m not sure, sir,” I heard a woman’s voice say. Then Tawny came into the room. She was wide-eyed but calm, keeping it together. Her blouse was buttoned crookedly, each button one hole off.

“I don’t know who you guys are or what you’re doing,” she said, her voice low and intense, “but you better haul ass. The security guys are coming up the elevator!”

“Fuck!” I said, and grabbed the black bag from the bed. Pulling out the Beretta, I stuck it in my belt beneath my shirttail, where I could get to it fast. Reggie was following Tawny out the door, wobbling a little as he walked. Crossing the living room, I spotted the other earring and snagged it without breaking my stride, slipping it into my right pants pocket with its mate. Jimmy Z was still out cold. I resisted the urge to kick him in the head on my way out of the room.

There were several people standing in front of their doors along the hallway that led back to the atrium. Rodriguez, the golf pro, was leaning against his doorjamb, wearing a pair of black satin boxer shorts and smoking a cigarette, looking mildly curious. The bellboy the weightlifter had abused was hurrying away from Rodriguez’s room in the direction of the elevators, trying to tuck in his shirt and put his jacket on at the same time.

“This way,” Tawny said, leading us down the hall away from Rodriguez, the elevators, and the atrium. I thought she was heading for the fire exit, but she turned right down the short hallway I’d seen earlier, then jogged left into terra incognita.

Shortly, we came to a small elevator.

“This goes down to the pool,” she said, jabbing the down button.

There was a distant clunk as the elevator motor engaged. Shortly, the 1 above the door lit up. After several seconds that seemed like several minutes, the 1 went dark and the 2 lit up. It was a leisurely elevator, perfect for a resort, taking its time ascending to our floor.

“Come on, come on!” Tawny said.

I ran back to the corner and looked around. No one was in sight yet, but I could hear more voices in the main hallway, a loud, excited babble. The voices were coming closer.

Back at the elevator, the 4 was yellow. Then it went dark and the 5 blinked on and the door finally slid open. Tawny punched the button for the third floor and a lower one that said POOL.

“When you get off the elevator, go through the glass doors into the pool area and then go left,” she said. “Go out the gate and follow the path that goes around this wing of the hotel. It will take you to the side parking lot.”

The elevator stopped at three and Tawny got off.

“Thanks, babe,” Reggie said.

She looked back at him. “If they find out I helped you, it’s my job.”

“They won’t find out,” I said.

“I’m in the book,” she said to Reggie as the door slid shut, moving her head to keep him in view. “Tawny Pulaski.”