Siegel, James - Derailed

I heard them whispering to their boyfriends, who seemed interested in staying — the price was right, wasn’t it? But the women won out — the guys shrugged and said no thanks, then all four of them left.

“Next month . . . is my . . . birthday,” the old man in the walker said.

He’d maneuvered his way over to me. I remembered a game I used to play as a kid. It was called red light, green light, and the object of the game was for you to sneak up on someone without ever actually being seen to move. Whoever was “it” had to close his eyes and say, Red light, green light, one, two, three, then quickly turn around and attempt to catch the pursuers in the act of advancing. It wasn’t fun being it. It was eerie — seeing someone twenty feet back, then turning and seeing them frozen not five feet from you. It was like that with the old man, who every time I’d looked had seemed stuck in place yet was suddenly there by my right shoulder.

“Eighty . . . three . . . ,” he said again. He had to pause before every word or two in an effort to get enough air in his lungs. Vegas would’ve given you attractive odds on his making it to eighty-four.

“Happy birthday,” I said.

“Lived here . . . twenty years,” the old man said between gasps.

I imagined that was just about the time the hotel began its precipitous decline.

“Well, good luck,” I said.

Ordinarily, I found it hard talking to old people. I resorted to hand motions and condescension, as if they were foreigners. But this morning, talking to anyone was better than not talking at all. Because I was harboring two terrible fears. One that Lucinda and Vasquez and Dexter had already robbed and beaten Mr. Griffen; the other that they hadn’t.

The old man said: “Thanks.”

I needed to go to the bathroom. Nerves. I’d needed to go for the last hour but kept telling myself I couldn’t leave my post. Now I had to. I walked to the elevator and pressed the button.

The doors opened with a loud sigh; I entered and pressed twelve. I jiggled my legs, Come on . . . come on . . . trying to will the elevator doors to shut. Finally they began to close, the hotel lobby starting to narrow by inches, less and less of it until it was just about gone, a mere sliver of a view. I’d estimate ten inches — no more.

Just wide enough to see Lucinda and Sam Griffen enter the hotel.

THIRTY-NINE

It’s what I’d come for.

Even if I felt like shouting, No, not today!

Even if I wasn’t ready.

Still, I made it up to the twelfth floor without passing out. So far, so good. I made it into my room without being assaulted. I was on a roll. I paced around the room, back and forth, like the big cats in the Bronx Zoo, only the truth was, I was more like that lion in The Wizard of Oz, the one searching for courage.

I had courage, though, didn’t I — it was there somewhere, wasn’t it? Yes, of course. Courage was hidden behind the bathroom radiator in a towel. I went in and got it, unfolded the towel and took courage out.

I glanced at the mirror and saw a blind man staring back at me. A blind man with a gun.

I walked out of the room again, but this time I took the fire exit down—the dark stairway, which would enable me to peek once I made it downstairs. I shoved the gun into my pocket.

The stairway had strips of what looked like asbestos hanging from the walls; rats were scurrying back and forth in the dark corners of the landings. When I reached the lobby floor, I slowly opened the door wide enough to put one eye there. Only there was nothing to see. Lucinda and Sam were gone.

I walked back out into the lobby. Dexter was still behind the desk, but he appeared to have just gotten there. Maybe because he looked jumpy. As if he were worrying about his tips.

I walked over to the front desk, although I couldn’t actually feel the ground.

“Excuse me?” I said to the deskman. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“That woman who walked in before?”

“Yes? Which woman?”

“The woman who walked in with the man. Just before. Dark hair. Very pretty. I think maybe I know her.”

“So?”

“Well, I’m curious if that’s her. What’s her name?”

He looked as if I’d just asked him for his wife’s phone number or the exact measurements of his prick. “I can’t give out that information,” he said dourly.

“Fine,” I said, “just tell me what room she’s in and I’ll call her.”

“You’ll have to tell me her name first,” he said.

“Lucinda?”

The deskman looked down at his register. “Nope.”

“How about the man. Sam Griffen.”

“Nope.”

For a second, I was ready to tell the deskman to check again and, if he still said nope, to accuse him of lying. That it was Sam Griffen, no mistake about it. Then I realized it wasn’t the deskman who was guilty of lying.

Sam Griffen wouldn’t have registered under his own name.

“Never mind,” I said. I walked over to the glass doors and stared out at the sunlit sidewalk.

This is how they do it, I thought. Dexter knows the room number in advance.

Lucinda picks the hotel. Then after Lucinda tells Vasquez when, Dexter tells Vasquez where. The exact room number. So Vasquez can be there waiting for them in the stairwell. Dexter is paid off, probably — each time he gets paid off. Dexter works Wednesdays and Fridays, but sometimes he works Tuesdays. If that’s when Vasquez tells him to.

I went back to the front desk. Dexter was still reading his magazine over by the bell station.

I had to get that room number.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Yes?”

I leaned forward and whispered, “That woman I asked you about before. She’s my wife. ”

“What?”

“I’ve been waiting to see if she’d come here. You understand?”

Yes, he understood. He was a hotel deskman, so he understood perfectly. Only he still wasn’t talking.

“I can’t give out room numbers.”

“Maybe for a hundred dollars you can.”

But even though he hesitated, licked his bottom lip, and looked around the lobby as if for eavesdroppers, he still said no.

I had approximately $280 in my wallet.

“Two hundred and eighty dollars,” I whispered, and then, after the deskman still didn’t say anything: “And I won’t tell anyone you run whores out of here.”

The deskman of the Fairfax Hotel turned red. He stuttered. He sized me up. How much trouble can this guy actually make?

He whispered: “Okay.”

“For two hundred and eighty dollars, I’d like the key, too,” I said.

And the deskman said: “Room eight oh seven.”

And when I slid the money across the counter, he slid the room key back to me.

FORTY

I went back up the stairs.

But this time I heard someone in there with me.

Not at first, though. I was concentrating too hard on simply walking up the stairs. Putting one foot in front of the other and eerily conscious of my own labored breathing. I thought I sounded like the old man in the lobby — like someone with one foot already in the grave.

Then I heard somebody else in there with me.

At least several floors above me and maybe drunk, because whoever it was was stumbling around up there and occasionally cursing at himself.

In Spanish.

Lucinda and Mr. Griffen would be in the room by now, I thought. Lucinda would be demurely removing her clothing. Turning her back to Mr. Griffen as she removed her dress and stockings. And Mr. Griffen would be thanking a benevolent God.

Vasquez? He would be positioning himself in the stairwell opposite their room.