“Soon as I saw those guys yesterday—they checked in as I was getting ready to go off—I said to Mel, ‘Let me see the registration cards, see what names they gave.’ He wouldn’t show me. He goes, ‘Registering guests is not a security matter, if you don’t mind.’ ” Mel, the day guy, sounding a lot like Kenneth, the night guy.
“I didn’t have time to hang around, keep an eye on them,” Joe went on. “I had to go to another job, a function at the Biltmore. They put on extra security for this bunch of Cuban hotshots meeting there. I mean Cuban Cubans, said to be Castro sympathizers, and there was a rumor Fidel himself was gonna show up. You believe it? I wore a suit instead of this Mickey Mouse uniform, brown and friggin’ orange; I get home I can’t wait to take it off. Those functions, you stand like this holding your hands in front of you, like you’re protecting yourself from getting a hernia, and you keep your eyes moving. So”—he gestured toward the entrance—”I saw the truck out there, the tan van, no writing on the sides? That’s the cleanup company, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the night guy said.
Little curly-haired twink, walked with his knees together.
“Well, listen, I’ll let you go,” Joe said, “and thanks for sharing that information with me, it was interesting. I’ll go check on the cleanup people, see how they’re doing. What room was that again, one-oh-five?”
It sure was.
There was furniture in the hall by the open door and a nasty smell in the air. As Joe approached, a big black guy in a white plastic jumpsuit, latex gloves, what looked like a shower cap, goggles up on his head, blue plastic covering his shoes, came out carrying a floor lamp.
Joe said, “Joe Sereno, security officer.”
“I’m Franklin, with Baneful Clean-Up.”
“Baneful?”
“The boss named it. He tried Pernicious Clean-Up in the Yellow Pages? Didn’t get any calls.”
Joe said, “Hmmmm, how about Death Squad?”
“That’s catchy,” Franklin said, “but people might get the wrong idea. You know, that we doing the job ‘stead of cleaning up after. This is my partner, Marlis,” Franklin said, and Joe turned to see a cute young black woman approaching in her plastic coveralls, hip-hop coming out of the jam box she was carrying.
“Joe Sereno, security officer.”
“Serene, yeah,” Marlis said, “that’s a cool name, Joe,” her body doing subtle, funky things like it was plugged into the beat. She said to Franklin, “Diggable Planets doing ‘Rebirth of Slick.’ ‘It’s cool like dat.’ ”
” ‘It’s chill like dat,’ ” Franklin said. “Yeah, ‘it’s chill like dat.’ ”
Franklin bopping now, going back into the room.
Joe followed him in, stopped dead at the sight, and said, “Oh, my God,” at the spectacle of blood: on the carpet, on two walls, part of the ceiling, a trail of blood going from this room into the bathroom. Joe looked in there and said it again, with feeling, “Oh, my God.”
“Like they was skinnin’ game in here,” Franklin said. “Shotgun done one of them at close range. The other one, nine-millimeter pistol, they believe. Man got shot four times through and through—see the holes in the wall there? They dug out the bullets. Made it to the bathroom, got three more pumped into him and bled out in the shower. Thank you, Jesus. We still have to clean it, though, with the green stuff, get in between the tiles with a toothbrush. We thankful the man came in here, didn’t go flop on the bed to expire.”
Joe said, “Man, the smell.”
“Yeah, it’s what your insides get like exposed to the air too long, you know what I’m saying? Your viscera, it’s called. It ain’t too bad yet. But if you gonna stay in here and watch,” Franklin said, “better breathe through your mouth.”
Joe said, “I think I’ll step out to the patio for a minute.”
The two secretaries from Dayton, Ohio, their bra straps hanging loose, were out by the pool already, this early in the morning, to catch some rays, working at it, not wasting a minute of their vacation. Joe took a few deep breaths, inhaling the morning air to get that smell out of his nose. On the other side of the pool, still in shade, a guy sat in a plastic patio chair smoking a cigar as he watched the girls. Guy in his sixties—he’d be tall with a heavy frame; his body hadn’t seen much sun, but his face was weathered. Joe believed the guy was wearing a rug. Black hair that had belonged to a Korean woman at one time. A retired wigmaker had told him they used a lot of Korean hair. This one looked too dark for a guy in his sixties. Joe had never noticed the guy before—he must’ve checked in yesterday or last night—but for some reason he looked familiar. Joe went back in the unit, ducked into the bedroom and picked up the phone.