The Big Dirt Nap

Three

Once we were away from the real cops, Hector slowed down and regained some of his swagger. He may have even shot his cuffs.

"You get a lot of police activity here?" I asked, speeding up to walk alongside him so I didn't look like I was being ejected from the premises.

He smirked as if it was no big deal.

"We found another homeless guy by the Dumpster once. Got stupid drunk and curled up in a spot where one of the delivery trucks sat idling the next morning. Died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Big Y comes for the food," he added, smiling. "Rachel, Mrs. Page, doesn't like it, but there's not much she can do about it—she can't stay in the kitchen all day."

It must have finally dawned on Hector that he was escorting a not-bad-looking woman through the hotel lobby, so he took the opportunity to flirt. "No one else comes here for the food. Not spicy enough. If we had a better kitchen, maybe there wouldn't be so much food thrown out," he joked.

He eyed me up and down. "You don't look like a gambler."

"I'm not," I said. "Why do you ask?" I thought of Nick's dumb comment about the odds favoring the house.

Hector told me that most of Titans's guests checked in and then left for the mega-casino twenty miles down the road. At one-third the cost for an overnight stay, Titans was a cheaper alternative for the nickel-slots crowd and the road warriors on limited travel-and-expense accounts who worked the Boston–Hartford–New York corridor.

But they didn't spend much on food and beverages here, and that was where the real markup was.

"Judging by the Maltese and her owner, you're pet lovers, too," I said.

"Yeah, we're pet-friendly. Fran"—he remembered himself— "Mrs. Mishkin loved animals."

So the Mishkins had somehow held on through the lean years with this motley clientele and, according to Hector, had recently, miraculously, been given the promise of an influx of cash from a Chinese investor named Wai Hi. But right now, the Mishkins were hanging on by their fingernails.

As we made our way out of the labyrinth of service corridors, past the much-maligned kitchen and into the all-beige lobby, I envisioned a change in decor to foo dogs and red tasseled lanterns. I wondered aloud why a Chinese businessman would want to invest in a nearly bankrupt hotel in Connecticut.

"Wai Hi made a lot of money in Malaysia. Solid-gold-faucet-kind of money—like that guy who had the six-thousand-dollar shower curtain," Hector said. "He's smart, that Bernie. He's got an in with the foreign press." Which meant that four or five times a year a busload of European journalists stayed at the hotel and went outlet shopping the next day. The idea was that they'd write about the experience when they got home to the Netherlands or Italy or wherever they came from.

"Publicity," Hector said, tapping his temple. "Bernie's always thinking about the big picture. In two or three years, we could have bingo tables all over this room," he added, spreading his chubby arms and fingers out wide, in an unconscious imitation of his hero.

Now, bingo, to me, conjures up very fond memories of Aunt Jo and little plastic disks and bottles of red ink with spongy tips. Warm and fuzzy, but not exactly the stuff that dreams are made of.

"Is bingo such a hot ticket?" I asked stupidly.

"Shows what you know. That's how they all get started," Hector said, as if I were an idiot or a five-year-old. "The big ones. Fox-woods, Mohegan Sun. All the Indians start with bingo."

We walked through the hotel lobby, past the corpse flower, past the sparsely populated bar, and I flashed back to grade school, trying to remember if I'd ever heard of an Indian tribe called the Mishkins.

Hector deposited me at the elevator and I assured him I could make it to the sixth floor under my own steam. Just then, Oksana, the bartender, ran over to us. She was shaking and jabbering in two languages.

"Is it true?" she asked, her accent growing thicker. She folded and refolded a thick wad of cocktail napkins.

Hector nodded.

She looked at me, in my revealing outfit, and must have gotten the wrong idea. She spat out a stream of what might have been Ukrainian and ended with the one word I could understand: "bitch."

"Hey, I didn't do anything. They just found my business card on him." The girl started to whimper again and Hector put his arm around her. Celine Dion's heart was still going on in the background, accompanying Oksana's sobs.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said. "I know you were friends." I didn't know anything of the kind but she was obviously distressed and I thought that would make her feel better. Instead, her sobbing escalated into wailing and she glared at me, as if Nick's death was somehow my fault. Hector rescued me from the unspoken accusation.

"C'mon, mamí," he said to her. "I'll get someone to drive you home."

This is so not what I thought I'd be doing tonight. I thought I'd be hanging out with an old friend, maybe treating myself to a massage, writing my little story. Not to be.

The first time I'd stood in that elevator, four hours earlier, Nick Vigoriti was handsome, sexy, and alive. The thought gave me the chills. Upstairs, I fumbled with the key again, but happily the green light flashed and I was able to unlock the door. As soon as I walked in, I noticed the smell. And it wasn't me. True, I'd just spent the last hour barfing near a Dumpster, in the same vicinity as a cigar-chomping troglodyte, a homeless guy, and a dead body that—to put it bluntly—was no longer sending out pheromones, but I wasn't what smelled. An unmistakable odor assailed my senses. Smoke. Not a fire—cigarette smoke.

I called out, thinking it might be the maid, or Lucy, who occasionally lit up despite my threatening to stage an intervention if she continued. No answer. I backed out of the room, gently closed the door, and hurried to the house phone near the elevators to call security.

Within minutes, Hector Ruiz reappeared.

"What's the problem, ma'am?"

I have a thing about being called "ma'am." I'm just not ready for it. Standing there in my hoodie and flip-flops, I didn't think I looked like a "ma'am," either.

"Hector, after all we've been through together, I give you permission to call me Ms. Holliday."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Someone's been in my room."

"Housekeeping has probably been there, unless you had a Do Not Disturb on your door."

"I did, but it's not there anymore. Besides, would she be smoking?"

"No, ma'am, Ms. Holliday. Of course not, but it's possible she had a cigarette on her break and the smoke lingered." Maybe he was right. I thought of the rancid cigar smoke clinging to Bernie Mishkin's hair and clothing. Hector spoke Spanish into his headset and I understood enough to know he was summoning the maid to the room.

"She'll meet us there," he said.

"I hadn't thought of that possibility; I don't want to get her in trouble."

"She won't get in trouble. We'll just clear this up." Hector was all business now, and obviously enjoying his starring role in such an eventful night. It must get boring with nothing to do except strong-arm the occasional drunken suburban suit.

We walked back to my room, arriving at the same time as the maid, who got there so fast she must have been behind one of the staff-only doors on the floor. She was a sleepy coffee-colored woman in a pale gray uniform with white collar and cuffs that reminded me of the little paper frills some people put on their Thanksgiving turkeys. She and Hector had an exchange in Spanish that was way too fast for me to follow. At the end, her eyes welled up with tears, and her neck, behind the ridiculous collar, flushed bright red.

"Look," I said, "it's not that big a deal. It's just that it's a no-smoking room. I'm sensitive."

"She says she was here to turn down the bed about an hour ago—that would have been when we were downstairs—but she doesn't smoke. Let's go in, shall we?"

He opened the door with his passkey and the maid and I followed him into the room sniffing like hounds on the trail. Only I detected anything. Faint, but definitely there.

"I know someone's been in here," I said.

"Do you want to check to see if anything's missing?" Hector asked, unconvinced.

The laptop was still on the coffee table, and my backpack was on the love seat. I checked my wallet; nothing appeared to be missing.

The maid shrugged and said something to Hector in Spanish, then went over to the bed to straighten the dust ruffle.

"She says, Perhaps it was su esposo, your husband," Hector translated. I had the feeling he might have left out a few choice words, like crazy gringa.

"Well, then we'd have a small problem since I don't have a husband."

"The maid says she saw the two of you going into the room earlier."

What was she talking about? Usually it's the semihysterical woman who claims to have been with someone that no one else has seen—not the other way around.

"Young, dark, macho," Hector prompted. "Perhaps a friend?"

"That guy? That was the dead guy, Nick what's-his-name." Not the smartest thing to say to a man who'd just heard me vehemently deny knowing Nick Vigoriti.

"My key wasn't working. He helped me get into my room. That's all. He didn't come in." Tired of explaining, tired of being interrogated, I said, "You're right. Everything's fine." I sniffed the air and smiled. "There's no cigarette smoke here. All in my head. I'm sure it's just the strain of the evening's events." I couldn't wait for them to leave so I could triple-lock the door, rinse the taste of vomit from my mouth, and plunder the minibar. Now I did want an alcoholic drink. And carbs. Who could blame me for indulging in a little stress eating after a night like this?

The maid was still muttering, mostly to herself. She brushed by us to get to her cart outside and then returned to the bed. She smoothed out the turned-down corner of the duvet and placed a chocolate on each of the pillows.

They left with assurances and apologies—hers sincere, his, I wasn't sure about. As I closed the door, the maid continued her monologue.

"Pero nunca olvido las dulces," she said, shaking her head.