Джон Макдональд - A Key to the Suite

“Why should you have been worried anyway?”

“After all these years you’re still innocent? A call girl comes into the house all set so she can pretend to be something else, all cleared with me in case somebody gets suspicious, and you should know right away somebody is being set up. It could be my business, Rick. There’s money in that herd of nothings you’ve got over there. So suppose it was a high-level badger game bit? And the sucker doesn’t stand still for it. And it becomes a police and newspaper thing. That would be wonderful public relations, sweets.”

“So why aren’t you worried so much now?”

“Because this chick is on Alma Bender’s list, and that’s a solid guarantee of no trouble. No blackmail, no disappointments. When we got anybody here who could be done a lot of damage and who’ll go for the rate, I play it safe and use Bender, and there’s never been a kick yet. Hey, sweets! Now I know how it is I remember the name of that chick. Cory Barlund. Sure. Remember the honorable congressman from Indiana, over a year ago? The youngish one hiding out down here so he wouldn’t have to testify and embarrass a friend?”

“Almost two years ago.”

“Nice guy. He got lonesome. I used Bender and got him that chick. He flew down here I swear five times trying to get her again, by name, but she never would make the return match, and every time he got a no, I thought he’d break into tears. That’s why the name was familiar. Otherwise, who the hell would remember their names? And why? I feel safe, but I think I’ll check it with Alma Bender anyhow, just to be sure Barlund isn’t going this one alone.”

“Anything I should do?”

“No, sweets. If it’s sour I’ll let you know and find some way to handle it.”

DiLarra stood up. “One thing that always gets me. Why do they buy it? Why do they pay so much? God, Alan, this town is so full of...”

“Use your head, sweets. Sure, any guy who isn’t a complete monster can kill himself down here on random tail, but he is always running into problems. Sometimes she turns out to be a teaser, or a lush, or even sick. Or she wants to fall in love, and that’s a problem. Or she’s two months along and is looking for somebody to set up for the marriage bit. Or she’s a nut. Or the cops want her. And even when you have none of those problems, it still takes a lot of time and talk setting it up. And maybe, if everything else is fine, you end up with somebody with no talent for it. The busy, important man, sweets, does better with a high-level pro. All the questions are answered before you start. If he wants to do the town, he knows she’ll look good enough and dress well enough to take anywhere. And she won’t get plotzed or chew with her mouth open or leave him for somebody else in the middle of the evening. He knows just how the evening is going to end up, and he knows she’ll be good at it, and he knows there won’t be any letters or phone calls or visits a couple of weeks or months later. It’s efficiency, sweets. Modern management methods. And these days, if he travels first class, he’s working on a two-to-one chance she’ll have a college degree.”

“Are you selling me?”

“In any game in the world, Rick, never bet on the amateurs, because you’ll never know what the hell they’re going to do.”

In the murmurous, echoing emptiness of the Convention Hall, seven separate workshops were in progress. In private meeting rooms, committees were at work. In the Convention Hall men wandered away from the study groups when their interest lagged, and kibitzed other groups. The voices of the speakers, unamplified, droned in a sleepy, uncoordinated chorus. Men wandered and glanced at each other’s badges of identity, and joined in groups of two and three and four to talk in low voices about how drunk who got and who had what lined up. They asked about each other’s families, told stories about other conventions, exchanged gossip about who was going to be promoted and who was on his way out.

The hospitality suites were muted with a recuperative quiet, the stains removed, the liquor replenished. Of seven hundred delegates, perhaps three hundred would sleep until noon, and there was another much smaller group which was still out somewhere in the city, their hotel beds unused. Hangovers ranged from mild dull headaches to repetitive, uncontrollable nausea.

There was a constant trickling traffic through the exhibit ramp. Delegates picked up brochures and pamphlets, accumulating bright glossy assorted stacks which would clutter a bureau top for several days and then be dropped in the room wastebasket at the time of packing. At the AGM display, Bunny and Honey, in starchy, brief little cotton sunsuits, wriggled, pranced, smirked, passed out the literature, activated the displays, chanted the memorized answers to anticipated questions and, from time to time, when a group of at least ten had accumulated around the display, they would go into the routine, much like a prolonged television commercial, which Tommy Carmer had made them learn.

Several of the corporations, including AGM, had rented pool area cabanas for the duration of the convention. These were the gathering places for the rather small contingent of wives of delegates. They lay on the casually grouped chaises, greased themselves constantly, gossiped, practiced corporate gamesmanship, ordered tall rum drinks and made agonizing decisions about what to do with the rest of the day — such as to go shopping or take a nap or play cards.

Amid the forenoon silences on the third floor, north wing, several salesmen of a company which makes large industrial pumps, were in danger of strangling on their own attempts to laugh without making a sound while they played an innocent game on one of their shyer associates. They stood outside the door of the company suite looking along forty feet of corridor to where the most inveterate practical joker of the group stood, tensed and furtive, within reach of one of the big aluminum housekeeping carts. The cart stood outside one of the rooms. The door of the room was ajar. At intervals of almost a minute, the joker would reach out, grasp the pull-bar of the cart and shake it, so that the soiled glasses and the containers of cleaning materials would jingle and clatter. Each time he did so, the observers would clutch each other and make small groaning sounds as they tried to stifle their intense amusement.

Earlier that morning, an enterprising one in the group had discovered that the maid for that end of the corridor was available for special service, at ten dollars a throw. She had obliged the others of the group in turn, all except the shy one. The romantic aspects of it left something to be desired. She was a tall Austrian girl with ginger hair, a sharp nose, bulging blue eyes, a turkey neck, a heavy accent, meager breasts and round heavy hips.

There were rules to be obeyed, ja? The door, it has to be open. The cart, it must be outside door always. And the cleaning schedule, it must be kept, ja?

After she had decided to take the risk of a multiple income, she had stowed her panties under the stack of clean towels on the housekeeping cart. She was too much in terror of the housekeeper to risk removing her gray and white nylon uniform. So she hitched it high, and performed with a strenuousness partially motivated by panic, and kept her eye on the room door at all times.

They had, with difficulty, talked the shy one into taking his turn. He had been very dubious about the open door.

Suddenly the joker tensed, whirled and came sprinting soundlessly along the corridor. The five salesmen erupted into the suite, gasping, hugging themselves. The joker, eyes streaming, said, “She... she cussed him out in kraut... and she... she said she couldn’t waste... any more time. Shh, you guys. He’s coming.”