James Church - The Man with the Baltic Stare

“The elevator is around the corner.” Luís was several steps ahead of me. “Don’t gawk, Inspector, or it will make you dizzy. Nothing in this lobby fits with anything, so everything seems to be whirling around and repelled by everything else. The place is an abomination, I agree.”

The elevator took us smoothly to the thirty-fourth floor. As we stepped out, Luís took a key card from his pocket. “Room Thirty-four Twenty-seven, to the left. This is the executive preserve, but I don’t know if there are any executives awake yet. In any case, we’ll tread softly.”

Treading proved to be no problem. The hallway carpet was thick and the walls were completely soundproofed. Every room would be an isolated world in the middle of nowhere. Luís paused at a door and read the number. “Don’t touch anything; don’t take notes; just look. Regulations.”

“You have a lot of regulations, it seems.”

“We do. That happens in warm climates, have you noticed?”

“But you don’t follow them all.”

Luís shrugged and opened the door. “I do what I can.”

As soon as we stepped inside, I realized that the middle of nowhere was exactly what had been on the mind of the interior decorator. Room 3427 was a place where nothing led to nothing, shapes blurred, and colors blended, with the exception, perhaps, of one particularly noxious square chair, bloodred leather that looked about to leap screaming from the window. The living room was considerably longer than it was wide, which was perfect for an executive used to working in a tunnel. The bedroom was not much better, and because of the odd shape of the building it was a tunnel sliced by a large angled column necessary to bear the weight of the twenty floors above that hung out from the building in a series of steps. The effect was to remind anyone trying to sleep that their life was dependent on this column and that the construction company that put it up had no doubt scrimped on materials in order to pay off the building inspector who at this very moment was in the casino downstairs, one small step ahead of the MSS. Outside the bedroom window the view was obstructed by steel framing with no obvious purpose. It couldn’t possibly be structural, I thought. If it was, I wanted to get to a lower floor right away. The column in the bedroom came up about a meter from the window, creating an isolated alcove so useless that not even the crazed decorator had been tempted to use it. An absurdly wide window ledge added the final touch, separating the room from any sense of connection with the rest of the planet and underlining the impression that the hotel might actually not even be part of the known universe.

Because the room was on the corner of the building, the bedroom had windows along two walls. Looking out from the window opposite the bed, I spotted bamboo. Even here, in such a humid place, I thought, it doesn’t grow to thirty-four stories. “What is that?” I pointed.

Luís swam across the carpet. “It’s what they call a sky garden, balconies that take advantage of all of the crisscrossing structural beams. This floor doesn’t have any. I don’t know if the architect had them in the original plans, or if they were an afterthought designed to squeeze out extra money from the guests. It is hard to tell.”

“It looks to me that whoever might be lounging in the chaise down on that porch could probably see someone at this window.”

“I suppose so. We haven’t checked.”

Haven’t checked? What had they been doing for the last few weeks? “If one can see, presumably one can also hear, no?”

“Probably not. The glass is very thick. And the rooms, as you can tell, are completely soundproofed. The walls have baffling on them covered in what looks like leather. It’s like living in a cow’s stomach. Personally, I wouldn’t pay the money.”

“How much?”

“About eight thousand Macau dollars, maybe a thousand in real money, or ten of your super notes if you prefer.”

“Where’s the bathroom?”

“Can’t you wait until we get downstairs?”

“I only want to look, Luís.”

“Ah, well.” He pointed. “It’s tucked away nicely.”

The carpet stopped and a marble floor announced the entrance to a small hall that bent around a corner to the bathroom-Jacuzzi, dry sauna, and separate toilet with its own television, which worked. Opposite the bathtub was a long window, again looking down on a porch attached to the floor below.

“A reckless bather could put on a nice show,” I said. As I moved to the window, I tripped on a ledge at floor level-no doubt the Ur beam holding the whole place up.

“Not what your thousand-dollar toes want to find at three in the morning.” Luís was searching along the side of the window. “There’s a shade here somewhere, but it goes up and down electronically and the switch is the devil to locate. Most people probably don’t bother with it.”

“Let’s go back to the living room.” I limped into the tunnel and pointed out the window. A city the size of Macau is not spectacular much above the twentieth floor. The contours of the hills are lost, and the quaintness of the colonial buildings is impossible to distinguish without binoculars. Who wants to pay a thousand a night to look at the view through binoculars? “What is that? That tall wall with all the windows, at the top of what looks like a long stairway, what is it?”

“Those are the ruins of St. Paul’s. You were practically there when you came to my office. You want to go see them?”

“A lot of stair-climbing to see ruins on a hot afternoon,” I said.

“It is well to look up to God, Inspector.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “but I don’t need a heart attack in the process.” I pointed a little to the right. “And those ruins, next to Paul’s?”

“The hilltop fort. The Portuguese built it in the early sixteen hundreds. It’s a nice climb up the hill. The view from there is much better than from here, or it would be if this hotel were blown up. You probably can’t make it out, but the Portuguese consulate is down in front of the fort, at the bottom of the hill. Interesting building, very colonial. Extremely yellow.”

“Is there a room safe?”

“No, I think the Consul General keeps his valuables at home.”

“I mean in this room.”

“Of course.” We walked over to the dressing area, more dark wood, subdued lighting, muted colors. It was exactly the place to mourn the loss of a year’s worth of bribes in a single game of baccarat. “The safe is in the top drawer of the dresser. Would you like to put something in for safekeeping?”

“No, thank you.” I bounced up and down on my toes. “A suitcase full of body parts wouldn’t have rolled very well on this carpet,” I said.

“It was an expensive suitcase.” Luís opened the drawer and touched some buttons on the safe. “I think they design them for all contingencies. Besides, the floor from the bathroom is marble and, as I told you, the body was butchered in the bathroom. Rolling from the bath to the front door would have been no problem.”

“And the hallway carpet?”

“The rich are like you and me, Inspector, only smarter, more devious. They don’t let carpeting stand in their way.”

“Anything else I need to see, before you tell me what you left out in your first rendition of what was in that folder?”

“You have seen all. Shall we return to the living room to sit? You take the couch. I’ll take the desk chair.”

“And the red leather one?”

“I prefer to let it rest in peace.”

“So, you intend to stay with this case. You have a dogged nature; that much is clear from the way you looked at Lulu.”