Slugfest

Fourteen

The next morning I left a message for Bleimeister at the number Babe had given me. At the convention center Rolanda Knox was marginally more civil than she’d been the first few days. I thought of asking if she’d seen the young man who’d tried to sneak in, but I didn’t want to bring up a painful subject. I smiled, flashed my badge, and headed for my booth, threading my way through union workers still laying down carpet and hopeful contestants spritzing and pruning their floral entries.

I was expecting another delivery for the prejudged specimen plant categories and braced myself for the notorious trade show issue of drayage. A word that seldom crops up in most conversations. To cut short the six pages of convention mumbo jumbo, your boxes, like Elvis, may be in the building, but until some guy who looks like a member of ZZ Top says so, it’s anyone’s guess when you’ll see them. And new exhibitors were low men on the totem pole who had to dangle candy, free goods, and occasionally cash to light a fire under them. You made your peace with it and thanked them profusely when your merchandise arrived.

I stopped at the concession stand to refuel. The barista had just arrived and it would be five or ten minutes before the coffee was ready, so I took a spin around the floor. Nursery pots and electrical cables had been camouflaged with literally tons of pine bark mulch. Timed mistings kept everything moist, and consequently the entire building smelled like a national park or the woods after a spring rain. Incongruously, the air was also filled with the incessant beeping of service vehicles backing up. When had that become mandatory? If you can see the vehicle, you don’t need that hideous noise; and if you can’t, how will it help?

The beeping died down, first one chirping machine, then another, like quitting time at a factory. Then it stopped entirely and was replaced by footsteps and a flurry of activity. Two men with walkie-talkies materialized and sprinted to a set of escalators at the rear of the convention center. Rolanda and three other guards barreled past me, wearing their game faces and trying not to look alarmed. I followed at a discreet distance. Whatever it was, it was bound to be more interesting than waiting for coffee to brew. Had a deer been spotted? A vole?

A dozen or so onlookers were clustered at the top of the escalator. Below, near an exhibit of storage sheds, more gawkers stood outside a red ten-by-ten unit with faux gingerbread detailing and vinyl hanging planters on the windows. Thirty-seven hundred bucks—I’d talked a client out of buying one by telling her she’d also have to hire seven dwarves to go with it to get the full effect. The white resin planters outside the shed were slightly askew and a trio of smaller pots overturned.

When the guards reached the lower level, the crowd parted and that gave me a somewhat better view down the nonworking escalator. All I saw were two Timberland boots, feet splayed in an awkward pose that didn’t look comfortable and didn’t look healthy.

The convention center’s emergency staff, two handymen with a defibrillator, were quick on the scene, but they looked nervous, inexperienced, and in over their heads. Onlookers stepped aside to let them do their work, but when the real deal arrived in the form of a New York City emergency medical team, the Wagner staff was visibly relieved and moved on to crowd control, a role for which they were better suited. I bumped into Nikki on the way back to our aisle.

“What’s the hubbub this time?” she asked.

“Doesn’t look good. Someone collapsed or maybe had an accident on the escalator.” I considered telling her what I really thought—that the person was as dead as Connie Anzalone’s veronicas—but why jinx him if he was still alive? And why upset her if he wasn’t? I’d seen a man fall over dead during a keynote speech at another trade show once. It wasn’t that dull a talk. He was whisked away and the speaker went right on yakking. Most people didn’t even know about it until they read about someone who’d taken ill in the show daily the next morning. As heartless as it sounded, one monkey don’t stop no show. A brief announcement over the loudspeakers stated the rear escalators were not in service. No reason was given, but Nikki Bingham already had a theory.

“Connie’s husband probably found out who nuked her veronicas and had the person killed.”