The hotel’s interior was about as classy as the exterior. The lobby furnishings consisted of a single threadbare couch and a half-dozen folding metal chairs. A bare pay phone was the wall’s sole decoration. There was an elevator but the sign across its doors said OUT OF ORDER. Next to the elevator was a heavy door with a wire-embedded window leading to a stairwell. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Jeffrey stepped up to the reception desk.
Behind the desk, a shabbily dressed man in his early sixties eyed Jeffrey suspiciously. Only drug dealers came to the Essex with briefcases. The clerk had been watching a small-screen black-and-white TV complete with old-fashioned rabbit-ear an’ He had unkempt hair and sported a three-day-old beard. tennae.
He had on a tie, but it was loosened at the collar and had a line of gravy stains across the lower third.
“Can I help you?” he asked, giving Jeffrey the once-over. Helping seemed the last thing he was inclined to do.
Jeffrey nodded. “I’d like a room.”
“You got a reservation?” the man asked.
Jeffrey couldn’t believe the man was serious. Reservations in a flophouse like this? But he didn’t want to offend him. Jeffrey decided to play along.
“No reservation,” he told him.
“Rates are ten dollars an hour or twenty-five a night,” the man said.
“How about two nights?” Jeffrey said.
The man shrugged. “Fifty dollars plus tax, in advance,” he said.
Jeffrey signed “Richard Bard.” He gave the clerk the change he’d gotten from the taxi driver and added a five and a few singles from his wallet.
The man gave him a key with an attached chain and a metal plaque that had
5F etched into its surface.
The staircase provided the first and only hint that the building had once been almost elegant. The treads and risers were white marble, now long since stained and marred. The ornate balustrade was wrought iron festooned with decorative swirls and curlicues.
The room Jeffrey had been given faced the street. When he opened the door, the room’s only illumination came from the blood-red glow of the dilapidated neon sign over the entrance four stories below. Switching on the light, Jeffrey surveyed his new home. The walls hadn’t been painted for ages. What paint remained was scarred and peeling. It was difficult to determine
what the original color had been; it seemed to be somewhere between gray and green. The sparse furnishings consisted of a single bed, a nightstand with a lamp minus the shade, a card table, and a single wooden chair. The bedspread was chenille with several greenish stains. A thin-paneled door led to a bathroom.
For a moment, Jeffrey hesitated to enter, but what was his choice? He decided to try to make the best of his predicament, or at least make do.
Stepping over the threshold, he closed and locked his door. He felt terribly alone and isolated. He truly could not sink any deeper than this.
Jeffrey sat on the bed, then lay down across it, keeping both feet firmly planted on the floor. He didn’t realize how exhausted he was until his back hit the mattress. He would have loved to curl up for a few hours, as much to escape as to rest, but he knew this was no time for napping. He had to come up with a strategy, some plan. But first he had to make a few phone calls.
Since there was no phone in the shabby hotel room, Jeffrey had to go to the lobby to place the calls. He took his briefcase with him, afraid to leave it unattended even for a minute or two.
Downstairs, the clerk reluctantly left his Red Sox game to make change so
Jeffrey could use the phone.
His first call was to Randolph Bingham. Jeffrey didn’t have to be a lawyer to know he desperately needed sound legal advice. While Jeffrey waited for the call to go through, the same pimplyfaced girl he’d seen through the cab window entered the front door. She had a nervous-appearing, baldheaded man with her who had a sticker attached to his lapel that said: Hil I’m Harry.
He was obviously a conventioneer who was seeking the thrill of putting his life in jeopardy. Jeffrey turned his back on the transaction at the front desk. Randolph answered the phone with his familiar aristocratic accent.