Hotel No Tell Read online

  I fished out my driver’s license, remembering that Macy had asked me to run the dermatologist through the DMV database before their first date.

  “Miss Zuckerman!” I felt a gentle hand on my arm and turned to see Alma Mae Martin flashing her bright red grin at me. Miss Alma Mae Martin, as she insisted on being addressed, was a nonagenarian who wore flapper dresses and spiky heels that added a good three inches to her not inconsiderable height. The staff at the nursing home had, in vain, urged her to relinquish the stilts, weaving ominous scenarios involving fragile bones and wet floors. She refused and had even signed a waiver saying she would not sue them for any incident that occurred while teetering in her preferred footwear.

  Alma Mae Martin maintained that it was her long legs atop tall shoes that had helped secure spots in the beds of the Kennedy brothers and the former secretary of defense. She wore the flapper dresses out of perpetual mourning for the Roaring Twenties, which she’d missed, coming of age as she had during the Depression.

  “What brings you here, darlin’?”

  “Hi, Miss Martin,” I said, sliding the clipboard back to Arturo.

  “Not ‘hi,’ sweetheart. A lady always says ‘hello.’ ”

  I wanted to point out that I was not a lady and neither, according to her purported track record, was she.

  “Hello, then.”

  “What brings you to this neck of the woods on a Thursday mornin’?”

  “A friend of mine just moved in,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. I indulged a quick imagining of her initial meeting with Samantha. It would be a matter of adoration or loathing. I predicted that there could be no indifference between the two of them.

  Arturo hung up the phone and nodded curtly at me.

  “Mrs. Hodges said you could go up. Third floor, room 308.”

  “Is that the short one?” Alma Mae asked, her lips twitching to avoid a snarl. So they’d already met.

  “How have you been?” I asked her, changing the subject and walking slowly toward the elevator so she wouldn’t trip.

  “Oh, honey, I’ve been evah so busy,” she said, fanning herself as though she were on a porch in Savannah. “I’ve been sorting through my old love letters. The ones from Jack, those are easy. But there were two Bobbies! In private, Mr. Secretary let me call him Bobby, so it’s tricky, you know, to tell which beau is which—”

  “You’re from the South, Miss Martin, right?”

  “A lady never interrupts.”

  “My apologies. But you’re from Georgia, yes?” We stepped into the elevator, where the metal walls distorted our reflections like so many fun-house mirrors. I pressed the button and hoped Alma wasn’t planning on escorting me all the way to Samantha’s room.

  “Oh, a long, long time ago, sugar. I’ve been up north for ages.”

  “Any suggestions on how to get a stubborn Southerner to change his mind about something?” I asked, embarrassed for myself.

  She laughed, a long-practiced but contagious birdlike laugh. “You have a Southern gentleman caught in your womanly web?”

  “I do, but he’s … presenting some problems.”

  We stepped off and Alma Mae pointed past some birthday decorations wilting along the wall to Samantha’s room. She was lady enough to know when to say goodbye.

  “Well, I’ve never taken a fancy to Southern men, myself. I prefer Northerners. Catholics from Hyannis Port, in particular.” She smiled and winked and I watched her saunter away, a swing in her achy hips. Fantasy lovers notwithstanding, I hoped I had her self-assurance when I hit ninety. I hoped I had it when I hit thirty-one.

  * * *

  Samantha slammed shut a drawer in the modest-size bureau. There were only two boxes and one suitcase in the room.

  “Where’s all your stuff?”

  “You see room for it here in this postage stamp? Storage.”

  “So why’d you come?”

  “I got tired of fine carpeting. I had a yen for linoleum and cheap cabinetry. Brings back my childhood.” She tugged at the suitcase on the floor. I reached down and pulled it onto the bed for her.

  Without acknowledging my help, she unzipped it and began removing items. Old age didn’t mean you had to be obnoxious, I thought. Look at Alma Mae Martin. No more kid gloves for this woman.

  “Okay, so answer this: Why did you ask me to come here? To clear your conscience? Because I already know you got paid to kill Jeremy,” I said casually, and then held my breath.

  It did the trick. Samantha froze, her hands on a hanger. She pointed her finger at me, but the gesture was tempered by the uncertainty in her voice.

  “I did not try to kill that man.”

  “That’s a lie,” I told her flatly.

  “I pretended to try to kill him. So I’d get paid. But I called 911 right away. And I went and got you. And I left the bottle so they’d know what he’d taken.”

  I thought back to Saturday night, to Delta’s insistence that someone had called for help at least ten minutes earlier, not two minutes. Samantha had called well before I told her to go do it.

  “The bottle with the crossed-out label? Under the bed?”

  “I left the name of the drug showing, so they’d know,” she said defensively.

  “Hold on.” I allowed myself a quick doglike shudder to clear my head, which was reeling from the fact that she hadn’t denied my accusation of attempted murder. A week ago, I’d been eating Asa’s trial-size SnackWell’s at the front desk, and Samantha Kimiko Hodges had been a sweet old lady with a dress-by-numbers wardrobe. “Let’s start with the person who paid you to kill—”

  Samantha jabbed her extended finger at me.

  “—sorry, to not kill Jeremy.” I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to play along with Samantha’s interpretation of events, but for now, I had to resist pointing out that poisoning someone with an entire bottle of Ambien was not, by any definition, pretending.

  “I don’t know her name.”

  Her. It surprised me, though it shouldn’t have. Add it to the remedial feminist lesson plan: Women are capable of hiring murderers, too. Of hiring female murderers, in fact. Female murderers who were active members of AARP. I wondered if the criminal world was outpacing legitimate businesses when it came to progressive hiring practices. I sat down on the bed.

  “How …?” I tried to find the question that would get me to the beginning. “Why …? How did you meet her?”

  Samantha resumed unpacking. “She found me through the Bernie Madoff list,” she said, as easily as if we were having a conversation under dryers in the salon.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The list of Bernie Madoff’s victims is everywhere on the computers. This woman found me that way.”

  My brain tripped over the unexpected name. “You lost money to Madoff and so you agreed to kill someone to get some more money?” I asked incredulously. Surely my imagination was, once again, taking giant liberties.

  “Pretended to kill! That’s very important! Pretended! Swindling the swindler.” Her face turned red. “And not just some money. My husband lost everything to that shmendrik and then he goes and has a heart attack, leaving me with bupkes.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, wishing I could take a notebook out of my backpack.

  “Why did you call me here?” I asked again.

  “Because someone needs to catch this woman before she hires someone else to try again,” she said self-righteously.

  I declined to point out that Samantha herself might yet be of interest to any number of law-enforcement agencies.

  “But why me? Why not go to the police?”

  “Please. You are the police. This way I don’t have to waste my time sitting next to trannie hookers and talking to some shmegegge sitting behind a desk and breathing his coffee breath on me.”

  “I’m not a cop,” I said, snorting too loudly.

  “You’re not fooling anybody.” She waved me away.

  My fingers and toes went numb, and a wave of n
ausea undulated through me. My first undercover job and I’d blown it. Completely and utterly blown it. How long had she known? Where had I screwed up? I wondered just how many people I wasn’t fooling. I couldn’t exactly request an exit interview. Samantha continued to unpack, seemingly unaware that she had thrust a dagger through my professional future.

  I took a shuddery breath and tried to chart a new course. Was it worth expending energy to attempt to restore my ruse? If anything, I realized after a few seconds, the fact that I had a badge seemed to be a point in my favor at this moment.

  “Okay,” I acknowledged, chucking a month of apparently fruitless undercover work. “So you want to lead us to the woman who hired you. Are you hoping for immunity?”

  She looked at me scornfully. “I don’t need immunity. I didn’t do anything wrong. I made sure he lived.”

  Wow. I thought about Alma Mae and her insistence that she’d really entertained JFK, RFK, and McNamara in the boudoir. You could almost look forward to aging if this was the kind of rock-solid certainty it bestowed on you. Of course, in Samantha’s case, reality would necessarily throw a wrench in that certainty in the rudest way.

  “Let’s back up—way, way up,” I said, grabbing a pad of paper off the peeling laminated desk. If my cover was blown, I might as well get the facts right. I looked down and noticed she’d taken the hotel’s stationery as a parting gift.

  She sighed impatiently, as though it was my fault we were stuck there, keeping her from proceeding with her day.

  “You gave him the lemon drink full of Ambien at the bar?”

  She nodded.

  “And he drank it right there or took it somewhere?” I wanted to see whether Jeremy and Samantha would offer corroborating scenarios.

  “Right there. I remember Geraldine, the bartender, telling him he was lucky he was the owner’s nephew, otherwise she never woulda let him bring his own drink.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he goes and starts talking to a pretty little shiksa at the bar. Men have no idea when a woman is out of their league. Egos like you can’t believe.”

  “You stayed at the bar?”

  “Of course! I was watching him,” she said pointedly, as if to remind me of her virtuous concern for her victim. “He and the girl were chatting it up, and I almost felt bad for the schmuck.”

  “Almost,” I muttered.

  “You want I should not tell you anything?” she snapped. “So then he suddenly stops talking to the girl.”

  “He looked sick?”

  She squinted at a corner of the room. “No, actually. You know the couple who’d been staying in the room you found him in?”

  I looked up from my scribbling.

  “The Whitcombs?” I asked, surprised.

  “You think I bother with the names of everyone who comes in and out of that place? All I know is that they were a lot quieter than those idiot Australians.”

  “New Zea—never mind. What about the Whitcombs?”

  “They were checking out and saying goodbye and thank you to Geraldine. Why the guests all love Geraldine, I do not know. She smells like diesel, but everyone thinks they’ve had some kind of authentic experience after a conversation with her.”

  “The Whitcombs.”

  “You’re too pushy, you know that?” Samantha took her time folding a silk scarf, making the most of her captive audience. “So he—you know, him—he seemed pretty interested in them. Maybe he was starting to feel not so hot and figured he could run to their empty room if he needed to be sick?” She shrugged, unconvinced by her theory. “So then what?”

  “He excused himself and went straight up to their room.”

  “Did he ask them their room number? How did he know it?”

  “He didn’t say a word to them.”

  I frowned. I’d figure that out later. “So you said he didn’t look sick yet?”

  She put her hand to her cheek and shook her head as if remembering her disappointment. “Not really. Surprising, since I used the whole bottle.”

  I steadied myself against her detached affect, which was grotesque.

  “You followed him.”

  “Until he went into the room. Then I went and called 911. And then I came and got you.”

  “So how did you get the empty prescription bottle under the bed?”

  “I tossed it in after you opened his door.”

  A shot of horror rippled through me. She had been carrying out her crime right in front of me. I looked at my notes to help maintain a blank expression, a feat of Everest proportions for me.

  “Tell me about the … your employer,” I said, trying not to make it sound like a joke.

  “Never met her.”

  “You spoke on the phone?”

  “What, you think we did the e-mail?”

  She certainly didn’t sound like a novice.

  “How many times did you talk?”

  Samantha slammed closed the top drawer of the dresser. I’d have to hurry; she was getting agitated.

  “Maybe half a dozen times.”

  “Did you move in to the hotel before you were hired or because you got hired, to be near Jeremy?”

  “Because.”

  I filed this away; if I paused to consider the appalling extensiveness of the plot, I’d lose my line of questioning.

  “Did she tell you why she wanted to kill Jeremy?” Sometimes I couldn’t believe the words that crossed my lips in the course of doing my job. Until now I’d thought interrogating the nail-salon owners in Queens about whether they’d bought a dozen bottles of Sex Hair or Vigorous Love (both shades of pink) was a highlight.

  “Nope.” She hung a bright orange silk—Fridays—in the closet, then zipped closed the suitcase. It was still half full of clothes.

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “Nope.” She wrestled the suitcase into the closet. This time, I didn’t bother helping.

  “Did you know that the money came from the victim’s—I mean Jeremy’s—business account?”

  Samantha let go of the suitcase and stood up straight. An expression approaching surprise crossed her face. “So she’s his business partner and she wanted him dead,” she concluded with a satisfied nod. “See, I helped you! That was easy. Go arrest her and get some sleep. You don’t look good.”

  I ignored the last comment. “Mrs. Hodges, I wouldn’t exactly say you’ve helped me yet. I’m going to need a name, a number—”

  “What do you mean I haven’t helped? I told you this whole big thing, this murder plot. So I don’t know her name and I don’t know her number—big deal. You’re smart, you’ll figure it out.”

  “She called you—you obviously know her number!” I exploded.

  “She called me from pay phones. I didn’t even know any pay phones still worked,” she added, just as I had the same thought. “So did you decide to bear your lover’s children?”

  I looked up at her, startled. Did she really think she was off the hook? Her face was expressionless.

  “We’re not done,” I said tersely.

  “You’d better make up your mind, missy; otherwise you’ll spend your whole life, ping pong ping pong, patschkieing around until you’re an old lady without him or kids.” She bopped her tiny head from side to side.

  “I mean we’re not done here, you and me,” I said, feeling whatever authority I thought I’d gained in her eyes slip away. At what age could you earn and hold on to the respect of people older than you? Would it happen on my thirty-first birthday? Fortieth? Seventieth? Surely by the time I was seventy … “I’m giving us two weeks to reconsider,” I added haughtily.

  “You think you can give a man a deadline?” She laughed, which I’d never heard her do before. It was hoarse and unpleasant. She reached for her coat. “What you can do is walk me out.”

  I stood up, certain I had enough to arrest her but knowing that I wouldn’t, not at that moment. Besides being shy one essential pair of handcuffs, it was clear to me that Samantha’s mu
rderous employer would be wise enough to keep an eye on her freelancer. I didn’t want to do anything that would make the nameless, numberless, utterly unidentifiable woman bolt.

  “Mrs. Hodges!” I blocked her path. “You haven’t told me why you’re here. Are you sick?”

  She pressed her lips together. “He made me come here.”

  “Who?”

  “The one we’ve been talking about,” she said in exasperation. “The carrottop.”

  “Jeremy made you come here? How is that even possible?”

  Samantha looked uncomfortable, which was intriguing. She tried to sidestep me, but I blocked her again.

  “How did Jeremy make you come here?”

  The pretend murderer-for-hire scowled at me, and even though she was a foot shorter than I was, it was still unnerving being at the receiving end of so much disgust.

  “If I didn’t, he was going to call the cops on me.”

  “Ha! So you didn’t call me out of civic duty! You don’t care if this woman makes another attempt. You just didn’t want Jeremy to have you arrested!”

  “Get out of my way,” she blustered, and it occurred to me that it had been imprudent to identify Samantha to Jeremy as his attempted murderer. I didn’t need the various players taking justice into their own hands. It was one of many details I hoped would be overlooked if this case ever came to any kind of satisfying conclusion.

  “But why here, in a nursing home?”

  “Some mishegas about ‘see how you like being trapped somewhere against your will.’ ”

  “Wouldn’t prison have been a better trap?” I asked.

  She slipped past me and put her hand on the doorknob.

  “Maybe he did something illegal and doesn’t want to tangle with cops. I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ve got my money and he’s still alive. I figure this boss lady who hired me has enough problems that she’s not going to shell out another half million to have me killed.”

  And with that flawless logic, the little old would-be murderess headed out into the city, free as a bird.

  Chapter 12

  A lengthy phone call to Macy, followed by a quick visit from Mercedes, clad in rustling black silk and en route to Lincoln Center with her viola, had resulted in the most carefully considered outfit I’d worn in three years. To the uninitiated, it might look like I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but my friends had helped me weigh the complicated and unusual conditions surrounding my forthcoming summit with Gregory, and they knew what a long, challenging path I would be navigating that evening.