Hotel

10

Curtis O'Keefe and Dodo had settled comfortably into their communicating suites, with Dodo unpacking for both of them as she always enjoyed doing.

Now, in the larger of the two living rooms, the hotelier was studying a financial statement, one of several in a blue folder labeled

Confidential - St. Gregory, preliminary survey.

Dodo, after a careful inspection of the magnificent basket of fruit which Peter McDermott had ordered delivered to the suite, selected an apple and was slicing it as the telephone at O'Keefe's elbow rang twice within a few minutes.

The first call was from Warren Trent - a polite welcome and an inquiry seeking assurance that everything was in order. After a genial acknowledgment that it was - "Couldn't be better, my dear Warren, even in an O'Keefe hotel" - Curtis O'Keefe accepted an invitation for himself and Dodo to dine privately with the St. Gregory's proprietor that evening.

"We'll be truly delighted," the hotelier affirmed graciously, "and, by the way, I admire your house."

"That," Warren Trent said drily down the telephone, "is what I've been afraid of."

O'Keefe guffawed. "We'll talk tonight, Warren. A little business if we must, but mostly I'm looking forward to a conversation with a great hotel man."

As he replaced the telephone Dodo's brow was furrowed. "If he's such a great hotel man, Curtie, why's he selling out to you?"

He replied seriously as he always did, though knowing in advance the answer would elude her. "Mostly because we've moved into another age and he doesn't know it. Nowadays it isn't sufficient to be a good innkeeper; you must become a cost accountant too."

"Gee," Dodo said, "these sure are big apples."

The second call, which followed immediately, was from a pay telephone in the hotel lobby. "Hullo, Ogden," Curtis O'Keefe said when the caller identified himself, "I'm reading your report now."

In the lobby, eleven floors below, a balding sallow man who looked like an accountant which - among other things - he was, nodded confirmation to a younger male companion waiting outside the glass-paneled phone booth. The caller, whose name was Ogden Bailey and his home Long Island, had been registered in the hotel for the past two weeks as Richard Fountain of Miami. With characteristic caution he had avoided using a house phone or calling from his own room on the fourth floor. Now, in precise clipped tones he stated, "There are some points we'd like to amplify, Mr. O'Keefe, and some later information I think you'll want."

"Very well. Give me fifteen minutes, then come to see me."

Hanging up, Curtis O'Keefe said amusedly to Dodo, "I'm glad you enjoy the fruit. If it weren't for you, I'd put a stop to all these harvest festivals."

"Well, it isn't that I like it so much." The baby blue eyes were turned widely upon him. "But you never eat any, and it just seems awful to waste it."

"Very few things in a hotel are wasted," he assured her. "Whatever you leave, someone else will take - probably through the back door."

"My mom's mad about fruit." Dodo broke off a cluster of grapes. "She'd go crazy with a basket like this."

He had picked up the balance sheet again. Now he put it down. "Why not send her one?"

"You mean now?"

"Of course." Lifting the telephone once more, he asked for the hotel florist. "This is Mr. O'Keefe. I believe you delivered some fruit to my suite."

A woman's voice answered anxiously, "Yes, sir. Is anything wrong?"

"Nothing at all. But I would like an identical fruit basket telegraphed to Akron, Ohio, and charged to my bill. One moment." He handed the telephone to Dodo. "Give them the address and a message for your mother."

When she had finished, impulsively she flung her arms around him. "Gee, Curtie, you're the sweetest!"

He basked in her genuine pleasure. It was strange, he reflected, that while Dodo had proven as receptive to expensive gifts as any of her predecessors, it was the small things - such as at this moment - which seemed to please her most.

He finished the papers in the folder and, in fifteen minutes precisely, there was a knock on the door which Dodo answered. She showed in two men, both carrying briefcases - Ogden Bailey who had telephoned, and the second man, Sean Hall, who had been with him in the lobby. Hall was a younger edition of his superior and in ten years or so, O'Keefe thought, would probably have the same sallow, concentrated look which came, no doubt, from poring over endless balance sheets and drafting financial estimates.

The hotelier greeted both men cordially. Ogden Bailey - alias Richard Fountain in the present instance - was an experienced key figure in the O'Keefe organization. As well as having the usual qualifications of an accountant, he possessed an extraordinary ability to enter any hotel and, after a week or two of discreet observation - usually unknown to the hotel's management - produce a financial analysis which later would prove uncannily close to the hotel's own figures. Hall, whom Bailey himself had discovered and trained, showed every promise of developing the same kind of talent.

Both men politely declined the offer of a drink, as O'Keefe had known they would. They seated themselves on a settee, facing him, refraining from unzippering their briefcases, as if knowing that other formalities must be completed first. Dodo, across the room, had returned her attention to the basket of fruit and was peeling a banana.

"I'm glad you could come, gentlemen," Curtis O'Keefe informed them, as if this meeting had not been planned weeks ahead. "Perhaps, though, before we begin our business it would benefit all of us if we asked the help of Almighty God."

As he spoke, with the ease of long practice the hotelier slipped agilely to his knees, clasping his hands devoutly in front of him. With an expression bordering on resignation, as if he had been through this experience many times before, Ogden Bailey followed suit and, after a moment's hesitation, the younger man Hall assumed the same position.

O'Keefe glanced toward Dodo, who was eating her banana. "My dear," he said quietly, "we are about to ask a blessing on our intention."

Dodo put down the banana. "Okay," she said co-operatively, slipping from her chair, "I'm on your channel."

There was a time, months earlier, when the frequent prayer sessions of her benefactor - often at unlikely moments - had disturbed Dodo for reasons she never fully understood. But eventually, as was her way, she had adjusted to the point where they no longer bothered her. "After all," she confided to a friend, "Curtie's a doll, and I guess if I go on my back for him I might as well get on my knees, too."

"Almighty God," Curtis O'Keefe intoned, his eyes closed and pink-cheeked, leonine face serene, "grant us, if it be thy will, success in what we are about to do. We ask thy blessing and thine active help in acquiring this hotel, named for thine own St. Gregory. We plead devoutly that we may add it to those already enlisted - by our own organization - in thy cause and held for thee in trust by thy devoted servant who speaked." Even when dealing with God, Curtis O'Keefe believed in coming directly to the point.

He continued, his face uplifted, the words rolling onward like a solemn flowing river: "Moreover if this be thy will - and we pray it may - we ask that it be done expeditiously and with economy, such treasure as we thy servants possess, not being depleted unduly, but husbanded to thy further use. We invoke thy blessing also, O God, on those who will negotiate against us, on behalf of this hotel, asking that they shall be governed solely according to thy spirit and that thou shall cause them to exercise reasonableness and discretion in all they do. Finally, Lord, be with us always, prospering our cause and advancing our works so that we, in turn, may dedicate them to thy greater glory, Amen. Now, gentlemen, how much am I going to have to pay for this hotel?"

O'Keefe had already bounced back into his chair. It was a second or two, however, before the others realized that the last sentence was not a part of the prayer, but the opening of their business session. Bailey was first to recover and, springing back adroitly from his knees to the settee, brought out the contents of his briefcase. Hall, with a startled look, scrambled to join him.

Ogden Bailey began respectfully, "I won't speak as to price, Mr. O'Keefe.

As always, of course, you'll make that decision. But there's no question that the two-million-dollar mortgage due on Friday should make bargaining a good deal easier, at least on our side."

"There's been no change in that, then? No word of renewal, or anyone else taking it over?"

Bailey shook his head. "I've tapped some fairly good sources here, and they assure me not. No one in the financial community will touch it, mostly because of the hotel's operating losses - I gave you an estimate of those - coupled with the poor management situation, which is quite well known."

O'Keefe nodded thoughtfully, then opened the folder he had been studying earlier. He selected a single typewritten page. "You're unusually optimistic in your ideas about potential earnings." His bright, shrewd eyes met Bailey's directly.

The accountant produced a thin, tight smile. "I'm not prone to extravagant fancies, as you know. There's absolutely no doubt that a good profit position could be established quickly, both with new revenue sources and overhauling existing ones. The key factor is the management situation here. It's incredibly bad." He nodded to the younger man, Hall.

"Sean has been doing some work in that direction."

A shade self-consciously, and glancing at notes, Hall began, "There is no effective chain of command, with the result that department heads in some cases have gained quite extraordinary powers. A case in point is in food purchasing where . . ."

"Just a moment."

At the interruption from his employer, Hall stopped abruptly.

Curtis O'Keefe said firmly, "It isn't necessary to give me all the details. I rely on you gentlemen to take care of those eventually. What I want at these sessions is the broad picture." Despite the comparative gentleness of the rebuke, Hall flushed and, from across the room, Dodo shot him a sympathetic glance.

"I take it," O'Keefe said, "that along with the weakness in management there is a good deal of staff larceny which is siphoning off revenue."

The younger accountant nodded emphatically. "A great deal, sir, particularly in food and beverages." He was about to describe his undercover studies in the various bars and lounges of the hotel, but checked himself. That could be taken care of later, after completion of the purchase and when the "wrecking crew" moved in.

In his own brief experience Sean Hall knew that the procedure for acquiring a new link in the O'Keefe hotel chain invariably followed the same general pattern. First, weeks ahead of any negotiations, a "spy team" - usually headed by Ogden Bailey - would move into the hotel, its members registering as normal guests. By astute and systematic observation, supplemented by occasional bribery, the team would compile a financial and operating study, probing weaknesses and estimating potential, untapped strengths. Where appropriate - as in the present casediscreet inquiries would be made outside the hotel, among the city's business community. The magic of the O'Keefe name, plus the possibility of future dealings with the nation's largest hotel chain, was sufficient to elicit any information sought. In financial circles, Sean Hall had long ago learned, loyalty ran a poor second to practical selfinterest.

Next, armed with this accumulated knowledge, Curtis O'Keefe would direct negotiations which, more often than not, were successful. Then the wrecking crew moved in.

The wrecking crew, headed by an O'Keefe Hotels vice-president, was a tough-minded and swift-working group of management experts. It could, and did, convert any hotel to the standard O'Keefe pattern within a remarkably short time. The early changes which the wrecking crew made usually affected personnel and administration; more wholesale measures, involving reconstruction and physical plant, came later. Above all, the crew worked smilingly, with reassurance to all concerned that there were to be no drastic innovations, even as it made them. As one team member expressed it: "When we go in, the first thing we announce is that no staff changes are contemplated. Then we get on with the firings."

Sean Hall supposed the same thing would happen soon in the St. Gregory Hotel.

Sometimes Hall, who was a thoughtful young man with a Quaker upbringing, wondered about his own part in all these affairs. Despite his newness as an O'Keefe executive, he had already watched several hotels, with pleasantly individual characters, engulfed by chain-management conformity. In a remote way the process saddened him, He had uneasy moments, too, about the ethics by which some ends were accomplished.

But always, weighed against such feelings were personal ambition and the fact that Curtis O'Keefe paid generously for services rendered. Sean Hall's monthly salary check and a growing bank account were cause for satisfaction, even in moments of disquiet.

There were also other possibilities which, even in extravagant daydreaming, he allowed himself to consider only vaguely. Ever since entering this suite this morning he had been acutely aware of Dodo, though at this moment he avoided looking at her directly. Her blond and blatant sexuality, seeming to pervade the room like an aura, did things to Sean Hall that, at home, his pretty brunette wife - a delight on the tennis courts, and recording secretary of the P.T.A. - had never achieved.

In considering the presumed good fortune of Curtis O'Keefe, it was a speculative, fanciful thought that in the great man's own early days, he too had been a young, ambitious accountant.

The musings were interrupted by a question from O'Keefe. "Does your impression of poor management apply right down the line?"

"Not entirely, sir." Sean Hall consulted his notes, concentrating on the subject which, in the past two weeks, had become familiar ground. "There is one man - the assistant general manager, McDermott - who seems extremely competent. He's thirty-two, a Cornell-Statler graduate. Unfortunately there's a flaw in his record. The home office ran a check. I have their report here."

O'Keefe perused the single sheet which the young accountant handed him. It contained the essential facts of Peter McDermott's dismissal from the Waldorf and his subsequent attempts - unsuccessful until the St. Gregory - to find new employment.

The hotel magnate returned the sheet without comment. A decision about McDermott would be the business of the wrecking crew. Its members, however, would be familiar with Curtis O'Keefe's insistence that all O'Keefe employees be of unblemished moral character. No matter how competent McDermott might be, it was unlikely that he would continue under a new regime.

"There are also a few other good people," Sean Hall continued, "in lesser posts."

For fifteen minutes more the talk continued. At the end Curtis O'Keefe announced, "Thank you, gentlemen. Call me if there's anything new that's important. Otherwise I'll be in touch with you."

Dodo showed them out.