Getting Up With Fleas (Trace 7) Read online

  Harden refused to look up. Last night, when he dressed like a human, he had looked like Mel Tormé gone sour with his little F U sweater. Today he looked like a break dancer out on parole. He was wearing a one-piece red satin jumpsuit, but it was cut like a jet pilot’s uniform with zippered pockets running every which way.

  McCue said, “Mind if we join you?”

  “Yes,” Harden said.

  “Thank you. That’s very gracious,” McCue said. We sat down and McCue poured us both coffee from the large stainless-steel pitcher already on the table. Also on the table was an open paper bag that looked as if it held birdseed.

  McCue looked around the room. Dahlia Codwell was sitting with the Scotts and Roddy Quine. Mrs. Scott seemed to have gotten into the Hollywood swing of things because she was wearing makeup that looked like it belonged on stage at the Folies Bergère and black wraparound sunglasses. McCue favored Dahlia Codwell with a big wave and a warm grin. She gave him the finger.

  “There’s your answer,” he whispered to me. “It wasn’t good for her either.”

  For a moment I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I remembered telling him he had taken Codwell to bed last night. He must have believed it.

  I looked for Tami Fluff. She was at another table with Ramona, Birnbaum, and Sheila Hallowitz. Everybody was chatting merrily.

  I lit a cigarette and remembered I had to get more today.

  Harden looked up from his cereal bowl and said, “Are you really going to smoke at the table? It makes me sick.”

  “It makes us sick to see people eating unwrapped Mouse Knots,” McCue said.

  I told McCue, “Nice, nice. Remember. Be nice.”

  “Oops. Right. You’re really looking fine today, Arden,” he said. “I really love your suit. Did Diana Ross mind selling it to you?”

  “Another thing,” Harden said. “How am I supposed to get any work done if you’re going to be parading up and down the hall all night, you and your gang of visitors?”

  “Simple answer to that,” McCue said mildly. “Don’t work. We don’t. Why should you be any different?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What visitors?”

  “Who knows?” Harden said. “Did you know, Tracy, that actors have the lowest IQs of anybody smarter than a garden snail? There’s a special category for actors, halfway between moron and imbecile.”

  “Yes. They call it rich man’s land,” McCue said. “Don’t be bitter. You may still have a growth spurt. Trace, I need breakfast. You too?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’ll you have?” he asked me.

  “What’ve they got, do you think?”

  “Vodka and gin.”

  “I’ll have vodka,” I said.

  “You two are disgusting,” Harden said. When McCue walked to the bar, he said to me, “I thought you might be able to civilize him while you were here, but you’re just as bad as he is.”

  “I’m sorry about the disturbances last night,” I said, trying to sound sincere. “You were in your room working?”

  “Yes. I work all the time. And I need peace and quiet.”

  “You didn’t see who went to McCue’s room?”

  “No. A lot of people. All night long.”

  “But you didn’t look out, maybe, to see who they were?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “And you were in your room all night?”

  “Of course. If I left, some idiot might come up and start messing with my script. I couldn’t have that. The goddamn doors don’t even have locks on them. I hate this place. My room’s too small. And too cold. I slept with towels on top of my blankets last night.”

  McCue came back with two glasses stuffed with ice and liquor. He set them on the table, then walked past me to the table where Birnbaum was sitting with Sheila, Tami Fluff, and the doctor. McCue tapped Ramona on the shoulder and the two of them walked a few steps away from the table. McCue was talking earnestly; Ramona looked annoyed. The actor shrugged and returned to our table. Harden stood up and folded his paper bag tightly. From under the table, he took a leather overnight bag, put the paper bag inside, and zipped it up. I could see the leather bag held a pile of yellow legal-size pads.

  He said nothing to us but turned to the door.

  Then Dahlia Codwell called out his name, “Arden.”

  He turned and she motioned him to come sit alongside her. I didn’t know; maybe she was going to tell him how little he knew about the movie business.

  What I was thinking about was what kind of staff the hotel had. Except for Clyde Snapp, the old guy I’d met at the gate, and the uniformed cretin on guard duty last night, I hadn’t seen anyone. But last night, there had been steak and eggs and fish and four different kinds of vegetables for dinner, and today there were large stainless chafing dishes filled with eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, and Danish pastries. I never saw a cook or a waiter or a busboy. I never saw anyone take away the dirty dishes. I never saw anyone on the front desk. Whoever was running this place should be hired by the Pentagon, I thought, because this was real efficiency. And I hoped they were efficient enough to have a cigarette machine on the premises because I had only one left and then it was gone because McCue took it and lighted it.

  He and I were the only smokers. I used to wonder why drinkers smoked so much until a doctor cleared up the mystery for me. This doctor told me that the body was a perfect biofeedback machine and it tried all the time to keep the body itself in perfect equilibrium.

  Now, when you drank, your blood vessels dilated and got larger, which the body didn’t like; it wanted them normal. So messages passed back and forth between the glands and the brain, and suddenly the body told you it wanted a cigarette. Taste had nothing to do with it. The body wanted nicotine because nicotine helped close down those dilated blood vessels. It was all part of the body’s way of maintaining equilibrium.

  “Is that really true?” I asked the doctor.

  “Damned if I know. But you’ve got to admit, it is one marvelously elegant theory,” he said.

  That it was. But the truth might be a more common stone. I think sometimes that people who drink a lot do it because they’re social misfits. And social misfits who get out in public never know what to do with their hands, so they fill them with cigarettes. That’s elegant too.

  Biff Birnbaum came over to the table and said to McCue, “Roddy and I are going out to look at the grounds, to see where we’re going to shoot some of the stuff. Come on out with us.”

  “Must I?” McCue said.

  “Only if you want to get paid,” Birnbaum said.

  “Why don’t we go out and look at the grounds to see where we’re going to shoot some of the stuff?” McCue said.

  “Good idea,” Birnbaum said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now. Can Trace come?”

  Birnbaum looked pained. “Actually, Roddy would rather he didn’t.”

  “Why’s that?” McCue asked.’

  “He thinks, well, Tracy’s a civilian, he’ll ask a lot of stupid questions.”

  “He couldn’t ask them of a more likely person,” McCue said.

  “That’s all right, Tony,” I said. “I have to get cigarettes anyway.”

  “If you have to go out, try to hold off till I come back. That way we can ransom your car.”

  Birnbaum said, “Let me get my jacket. I’ll be right back.” He was already wearing his New York Mets jacket. Maybe, I thought, he put another jacket over it when he went outdoors.

  After he left the table, McCue said, “Are you sure I screwed Dahlia last night? She didn’t seem real warm to me today.”

  “It sounded like her,” I said. “I could be wrong.” For some reason, I didn’t want to tell him I had lied to him. It had seemed funny at the time, but it didn’t seem so funny now.

  Later Ramona Dedley came to my table and sat across from me. She was wearing very short shorts that threatened the hotel’s PG rating and a scoop-necked blouse that
really scooped.

  “’Morning, Doctor.”

  “Did Tony sleep with that little tramp last night?”

  “Which little tramp?” I said.

  “Fluff. Did Tony sleep with her?”

  Sleep with? I loved people who used euphemisms because it always gives the dedicated professional the chance to mislead without actually technically lying. I learned that early. Sarge had sent me to a Jesuit college—I think largely to bust my Jewish mother’s chops—and one day I was waiting to see the dean when the dean’s secretary, also a priest, got a telephone call. “No,” the secretary said. “The dean’s not here.” When he hung up, he must have seen me looking at him quizzically. He smiled and asked me, “Is he here? No, he’s not. I don’t see him. You don’t see him, do you? He didn’t ask me if the dean was in his office. He asked me if the dean was here. The dean’s not here. He’s in his office and you can go in and see him now.”

  When I came out, the priest secretary said to me, “It’s called a mental reservation. Hang on to it, a very useful technique.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind the next time I go to confession,” I said.

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t work on God,” he said. “Only on people. When you use a mental reservation on God, it counts as a lie.”

  “Sleep with” her?

  “You’re not God, are you? “I asked Ramona.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Never mind. I don’t think Tony slept with her. Why?”

  “She was dropping hints about it at the table,” Ramona said.

  “Why would she do that? She doesn’t even like Tony.”

  “Hollywood,” Ramona said. “Who knows? What was Tony telling me that you took his pills?”

  “Yeah. I had an idea that somebody might have been tampering with them last night.”

  “What gave you that idea?” she asked.

  “When we came in last night, the pills had been moved. Some of them were spilled out.”

  “Sounds like Tony to me. He’s always spilling things, knocking them over.”

  “He wasn’t there when it happened,” I said. “He was with me.”

  “Who, then?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know that either,” I said. “Could you look at the pills and tell if something had been done to them?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” Ramona said.

  “I’ll drop them at your room, but I don’t think Tony ought to take any of them. Let him get new ones. He can afford them. He takes too many pills anyway.”

  “Is that meant to be critical, Trace?” the woman asked. I had hit a nerve because she was bristling.

  “No, ma’am. You’re the doctor, he’s the patient, and I’m nobody. I just think any pills are too many pills.”

  “You’re one of those hardy types? Never sick. Never take medicine. Never see a doctor.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, Tony’s not. He has low blood sugar. He has a kidney disfunction. He’s had a heart attack. He has thyroid problems. The pills…Dammit, you call them that but I don’t. Pills make them sound like recreational drugs. There’s no recreation here. The medication I prescribe for Tony is exactly what he needs, no matter how much bullshit he shovels at you. Pills? He takes Digoxin, 125 milligrams, orally, once a day. He takes…Oh, the hell with it. He takes what I tell him to take, when I tell him to take it.” Her voice was chilly and brisk. “And I don’t like being called Doctor Death.”

  “Maybe somebody’s trying to change his prescription, Doctor,” I said.

  “What?”

  “To poison,” I said. “I’ll drop those pills off at your room.”

  17

  The kitchen was one flight down, on the basement level. I found Clyde Snapp scrubbing up dishes at a large deep sink that looked as if it had been made of poured concrete. His sleeves were rolled up, showing his knotty muscled forearms.

  He heard me come in before I could speak, turned around, nodded, picked up a towel, and dried his hands. “Mr. Tracy,” he said.

  “Call me Trace.”

  He grinned. “You’re not looking so bad for somebody who had such a late night.”

  “I hope we didn’t wake you up coming in,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Np.” I knew already that that meant “no.” “I’m awake most of the time,” he said. “Besides, your father called late.”

  “Do you have any cigarettes around here?” I asked.

  “Sure. What do you smoke?”

  “Anything with a filter. The milder the better.”

  “Let’s see what we got,” he said. “There’s fresh coffee there on the stove if you want some.”

  I poured a cup as Snapp opened a cupboard that was filled with cartons of cigarettes. “I’ve got Carltons,” he said.

  “Good. I need three or four packs.” I reached in my pocket for cash, but he waved it away.

  “Forget it. I’ll put it on Hollywood’s bill,” he said. “If you need any more, they’re in here and the cupboard’s never locked.”

  I thanked him and looked around the kitchen. There was a cot against the wall in a corner. The kitchen looked as if it had been scrubbed with toothbrushes by a Marine Corps punishment detail. Everything sparkled.

  “I’ve been in operating rooms that weren’t this clean,” I said admiringly. Actually, almost any room that I spent any time in wasn’t that clean.

  “I like things snappy clean,” he said. “When things are in the right place, it makes life easier, lets you get things done.”

  “You the only person working here?” I asked.

  “Aaaay-p.”

  “You’re doing the cooking and cleaning and everything else?”

  “Aaaay-p. Everything except standing guard at the gate. I hired some local fellers to do that, just to keep out anybody who don’t belong here. That’s how I knew you was late getting in last night. You and that McCue.”

  “Well, you’re doing a hell of a job. I don’t know what you’re getting paid, but it isn’t enough.”

  “It’s enough,” Snapp said.

  “You been working here long?”

  “Since the hotel closed down, about five years ago.”

  “Are they going to reopen it?”

  “I think so. I think the owner wants to get some free publicity with this movie, so he rented the place cheap. Then, when the movie’s out, he’s going to reopen it.”

  “Who’s the owner?” I said.

  “Private owner. Not one of them hotel chains,” he said.

  “Sounds like everybody’s making out but you,” I said.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “The owner’s getting publicity for the hotel. The movie people are getting low rent. Everybody’s making a score except you.”

  “I’m getting my paycheck. Long as I get that, I figure I’m doing all right. Working hard now makes up for a lot of times when I just hung around and watched my toenails grow.” He went back to the sink and started to load clean dishes into a cupboard.

  I looked around again. I was drinking my coffee, leaning against a long stainless-steel table. In the wall behind me was a dumbwaiter door. There were two more spaced fifteen feet apart along the wall. Idly I opened the door behind me. There was a big pulley with a thick rope looped through it. Clumps of dust hung from the rope. A contraption that looked like a metal wedge was jammed into the pulley, sort of like a large doorstop, to prevent the cable from moving.

  “I ain’t been using that,” Snapp said.

  “No. I can tell. Would it work?”

  “Sure,” he said. “When the place opens up again, I’ll fix them up and clean them up. It’s a nice little touch, being able to send food up to the rooms that way. I get a kitchen crew in here and they can do it. Meantime, I shut them all off in the rooms upstairs, so nobody falls down the shaft.”

  I closed the dumbwaiter door and finished my coffee. />
  “The other half of the hotel that’s sealed off,” I said. “What’s going on there?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to redo those rooms, paint and wallpaper and stuff. Just as well, because that’s where they’re going to shoot the movie. I guess for their cameras and all, they’ve got to tear down walls and things. Promised that when they’re done they’ll fix it all up. If you can trust their promises.”

  “Well, so far so good,” I said.

  He closed the dish cupboard. “They don’t like to pay their rent. The first check was late, I’m told.”

  I heard someone running down the steps from the first floor.

  Sheila Hallowitz stuck her head in the door. “Mr. Snapp. You have a first-aid kit?”

  “Aaaay-p. What happened?” Snapp said. He grabbed a toolbox with a red cross pasted on top of it from under the sink.

  “There’s been an accident,” Sheila said. “Hurry.”

  18

  For about a hundred yards or so behind the hotel, the ground fell away toward the banks of the lake. Much of the land was clustered with trees, but there were broad paths leading through those areas. Closer to the lake, the land cleared into tightly trimmed lawn that rolled down to the water’s edge and the old wooden dock.

  Sheila ran fast, which made me sure she was from New York because speed is a survival skill for women there. She led us into a small clearing. A body lay on the ground.

  It wasn’t Tony McCue.

  It was Roddy Quine. He was sprawled on his back at the base of a large rock formation. His right pants leg was rolled up and blood was oozing out of a large gash in his leg. There was a big rock, maybe fifteen inches across, on the ground alongside him.

  Clyde Snapp ran up and knelt alongside him. Sheila took up her post alongside Biff Birnbaum. I saw Tony McCue leaning against a boulder on the far side of the clearing, looking bored.

  “Ain’t broke,” Clyde said, looking up at no one in particular.

  Sheila was rubbing her hands together, as if washing them of dirt.

  “Pretty good gash, though,” Clyde said.

  “Did anyone think to call Dr. Dedley?” I asked.