Planet Willie (8 page)

9

My head jerks
up off the pillow. Out the window it’s morning, and for a moment I don’t know
where I am. Then I recognize the smell, and then that’s my suitcase over there,
and then I’m regretting ever leaving dreamland, since what I’m looking at is
the Hotel Blue. Also my head is about ready to explode, courtesy of Mister Jack
Daniels and his friends.

I roll out of
bed to my feet and risk a glance in the mirror. Not too bad, although honestly it
could be better. Admittedly the belly does have a little jiggle to it when I
put it through its paces. Well fed, let’s call it. Normally I’d just call it plain
healthy if the rest of me weren’t feeling anything but.

I ease down to
the floor for a set of thirty pushups. It gets the blood flowing, which is
exactly what you don’t want blood to do in situations like these, but
considering how those Albanian kids here glared at me last night when I stumbled
back in to what I guess you’d call the lobby, I’m going to need the blood
flowing just that much faster than the next fella’s. Then I do some high-level
sit-ups, fifteen for Harry Shore, another fifteen for me. Figure I’ll get in my
aerobics a little later on and take a blazing hot shower till I’m feeling more
or less Willie again.

As I dress I
try to remember if anybody mentioned Kafka last night in the lobby. Then I try
to remember if anybody mentioned my owing them a hundred thousand bucks. Twiggy
seemed to have a few ideas about that. What she didn’t realize is that I’m
after the same thing she is, although judging from what I’ve seen of ALF’s
methods, there’s absolutely no advantage in partnering up with them to find the
painting. So I pack my suitcase, figuring I’ll check out fast and make another
call to the gallery. First, however, I wouldn’t mind speaking to this Alberto.
I vaguely recall mentioning his name last night to the crowd in the lobby, but what
I don’t recall are any polite answers.

The lobby’s
empty except for the cheery giantess, who never seems to move from her desk,
which considering her dimensions does seem wise. She grins up at me. I give her
the key and wave. She waves back, and we do some more grinning.

“Alberto?” I
ask. She nods her head, and I say Alberto again. You know the routine.
Fortunately this time she calls back towards the kitchen before grinning at me
again. Pretty soon a girl of eighteen or so comes out of the back wearing a
white apron over her clothes like she’s been cleaning rooms. Her hair hangs
close to her head and could probably be cleaned too. Poor girl looks exhausted.

“Yes?” she
says.

“I was just
checking out,” I say, “and was wondering if I could speak to Alberto before
leaving.” Her body’s thin and her face is pale, but when I say this she goes
even paler.

“I’ll walk you
out,” she whispers, and on the sidewalk she eyes me closely before asking if
I’ve seen him.

“Actually I haven’t
met him,” I say, “but I’d like to.”

She shakes her
head and tells me he’s gone. I ask for her name, she tells me she’s Eralda. Her
mother owns the motel and Alberto’s her boyfriend, or at least she thought he
was. I ask what happened to him. She says he went to Texas.

“How long
ago?”

“A few weeks.
He should call me, but he hasn’t.”

“Is he a part
of this ALF?” I ask.

She sniffs.
“He doesn’t need them. He has talent.”

Of course I’ve
got a pretty good idea of why our friend Alberto went to Texas, but I ask
Eralda for her opinion on the matter. She doesn’t know, he’s never traveled
like this before, and when she asked, he wouldn’t tell her why he was leaving.
I ask if Alberto and Kafka are friends.

“Kafka?”

“The tall kid
with the slouch.” She shakes her head no, and then I can’t help noticing her lips
lift a bit at the corners when she asks if I’m the one who gave him the black
eye.

“More like
Kafka did it to himself,” I reply, accompanying it with a little wink, which
she seems to appreciate. “Is he back in the hotel?”

She shakes her
head. “They left this morning.” They? Kafka and Drita, which some hazy memory
tells me is the other name of Twiggy. I ask where they were headed, and if Texas was by any chance on the itinerary. She seems confused. “No,” she says, “they went to
Colorado.”

And what’s
there to say to that? The plot thickens. If this keeps up, I won’t be able to
dig myself out with a shovel. I’ll be so buried in plot, they’ll move somebody
else onto my cloud. So I ask Eralda if she can do me one last favor. She’d love
to help, she says, so sweet and polite that if this Alberto’s got any kind of
sense, he’ll be back to her before long. Makes me wonder whether I’d be better
off sticking with Eralda for a few days and letting the mystery come to me, but
considering I’ve got leads scattering all over the continent, there
unfortunately may not be a whole lot of time for Eralda.

We walk down to
the next corner, where I happen to know there’s a working pay phone. Before depositing
a few quarters from my pants pocket, which is still loaded, we rehearse a bit.

“Can you do
some fancy accent?” I ask. She tells me she does a pretty good Mary Poppins.
“Perfect,” I say. “Then tell her you were at the marvelous show last night and
after further consideration you’d like to buy the still life with apples if
it’s still available. Insist on speaking to Miss Shore. You want to arrange a
meeting.” She nods as she takes this in, then asks why I can’t call her myself.

“We broke up,”
I say, dropping in quarters and dialing the number I’ve got. I hand over the
phone, Eralda clears her throat, and what comes out of that little mouth is not
just a British accent. Hell, Eralda could be the queen of England. She practically gets me bowing out there out on the sidewalk as she runs through
her lines then stands there listening with a look of royal disdain.

“What a
disappointment,” she says.

“It must be so
lovely this time of the year,” she says.

“Oh dear yes,”
she says. “In England we say that those who help others help themselves.
Perhaps you have that expression here.”

“
Thank
you, darling,” she says. “And please do tell her that Lady Eralda called.”

This goes on
for another thirty seconds or so, if you can believe it, and although I’m not
stingy with quarters, I am getting a bit anxious.

“What the hell
was all that?” I ask once she hangs up. Lady Eralda hums a little to herself
and curls the corners of her mouth.

“We we’re just
chatting,” she says. “She said that Miss Shore is attending a charity ball
tomorrow night and will be out of town for a week. We got lucky, though – they
didn’t sell the apples painting.”

“
Where
is this charity ball.”

“She said it
was in Vail.”

“Vail?” I say.
“Colorado?”

“Colorado,” she says, which does throw me for a loop, and also fills my calendar for the
foreseeable future.

Before saying
goodbye I get Eralda’s number and promise to call if I run across Alberto. Then
there’s really nothing left to do but head for the Port Authority and catch a
bus. Shore may be paying expenses, but two planes in two days might well kill
me. Long before Pittsburgh, however, I have come to a conclusion: only an idiot
takes a Greyhound bus from New York City to Colorado. All the books any
philosopher ever wrote can’t even begin to approach the wisdom held in that one
little phrase.

10

What I really
need to be doing is getting back down to Texas and making inroads into figuring
out my life, by which I mean my death. What I need to be doing is focusing on
unholy revenge, digging through ol’ Jimbo’s closet for pink paisley, and
investigating the origins of Lady Caroline’s new aquatic sport. But I’ve been
stuck on a bus to Colorado for a day, making pit stops in every town that can
lay claim to a population. I get to thinking about it as the cornfields whip
by, and I realize that the story of my life is that the story’s never the one I
intended it to be. Sort of makes you wonder if eternity is long enough to get
yourself on track.

What I guess I
also need to be doing is checking in with Saint Chief to let him know about my
current trajectory towards the ol’ Rockies, but you can bet that won’t sit too
well, so I decide that saying grace can wait. Finally, however, a miracle does
come, and I make it to Vail, where it’s winter again and I do begin to
reconsider that nostalgia for the seasons. Tromping through the snow outside
the bus station, I start asking around for the most expensive hotel in town. I
want Jacuzzis, I want fresh towels bigger than sheets, and I want room service
with a smile.

A taxi driver
directs me to what they call The Aurora Lodge and Resort Center, a many-starred
affair dropping down along the slopes with private patios so the guests can ski
right out from their rooms. The marble floor of the lobby is so polished you
get the feeling you could ice skate right across it. People sit around in arm
chairs in sweaters and waterproof pants reading paperbacks and watching skiers
fly down the mountainside. I tip the bellboy and tip a few of his friends, then
slip and slide over to the front desk and tell them I want luxury. They have me
checked in before I can pull out my Frequent Guest card, and the bellboy leads
me down some never-ending hallways to my own little piece of paradise. The
fireplace shoots flames at the push of a button, the bed could sleep everybody
you might meet, and the bathroom, I’m relieved to discover, comes equipped with
a bidet.

So I unpack my
worldly goods, slip the thirty-eight into the icebox of the minibar for
safekeeping, and call up Consuela in housekeeping to see what she can do about
an Italian suit that was never meant for Greyhound. Consuela’s on the scene in
forty seconds flat. Comes bursting through the door like the fire department.

“Where ees
dees soot?” she says, scanning the room like a maniac.

“I’m sorry,
Consuela, I don’t speak Spanish,” I say. She takes me by the lapels and shakes
her head at the sheer tragedy of it all.

“Off with
eet,” she says, and looks off towards the ceiling to give me a moment to work.
Hadn’t realized it was all that bad myself, but Consuela may have a point. A
perceptive woman, this little Consuela, and not unattractive with her black
hair up in a bun so tight it makes her look half-Oriental. She gets you
thinking maybe all this time you’ve been one of those masochists and never even
knew it. You wonder if maybe there’s a place to purchase a starter whip
somewhere in this town. Not to mention the white uniform, which of course is
fetish with a capital F as in fiesta.

Anyway, I get
the jacket off and then she sees the shirt, and believe me there is hell to
pay. She holds out her hand while hammering that little foot of hers on the
rug. I hand over the shirt without a protest and move on down to the main
event.

“I feel I
should say a little something here, Consuela,” I tell her. “But unfortunately
there is no word for it in Spanish. I know this because the people from the
dictionary down there came up to investigate. Turns out you lose too much in
translation, though maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”

Consuela may
or may not take this in, considering how she’s launched an assault on my
suitcase and I’m starting to feel like the Alamo in person. Humbling
experience, stripping unattended. By the time I get down to my pants zipper,
she’s got laundry piled up clear to her chin and I’m taking a little trip down
memory lane trying to pinpoint how exactly I came to be wearing no underwear.

“Holy Christ!”
I say by way of distraction, doing a little face I call the Poltergeist at the
sliding glass doors to the slopes. “It’s the Mighty Sequatchie Snow Beast.”

She goes for
it, and by the time she can turn back around I’m standing there in full
resplendence, unless you count the hat, which is technically just part of the
resplendence. Consuela scoots right across that hardwood like a hyperactive
lizard and has those pants up on the pile before I can make any introductions.

“Is that it?”
she says.

“You’ve got to
be kidding,” I say.

“No more
leetle socks under the bed maybe?”

“Sweetheart,
you’re holding my entire wardrobe in your hands there. How soon can we expect a
reunion?”

She shifts the
laundry up on her chest a little like she’s weighing it then subtracting the
clothes to see what she’s got left to obliterate.

“One hour,”
she says. “Will that be all, Meester Lee?”

“I guess
really only you can answer that question, Consuela, if you know what I mean.”

“Stop catching
cold, Meester Lee,” she says, softening up here a little if I’m not mistaken.

“To tell you
the truth, I’m a great one for laundry,” I say. “What do you say we just gather
round the bathtub in there and do it by hand. Protect the fibers, so to speak.”

Good ol’
Consuela. Giggles a little to herself, maybe. The smile certainly spreads a
bit, unless I’m mistaken and she’s just showing her teeth. Her eyes get tugged
out so wide by the hair-works I get to thinking she may in fact be Oriental.
May have to brush up on my Taiwanese, I’m thinking.

“Goodbye,
Meester Lee,” she says, hustling out the door.

“Call me
Willie,” I holler after her. “With a W as in
without starch
, sweetheart.
As in
wear
the uniform tonight and we’ll take it as it comes.” 

Which provides
me the opportunity to spend some time with my nudey self. I get to watching the
skiers out the glass doors plummeting past my little patio, thinking I’ll note
the finer points of alpine sports before I go out there myself to give it a
whirl. The way I understand it, you just strap on those skis and they more or
less take care of the rest, but all the same the snow seems to be winning in
Vail, Colorado. I mean within the space of thirty seconds I count six people,
eleven poles, and three skis coming by, though at sixty miles an hour my
arithmetic may be off. I move a little closer to the windows to investigate.
It’s just terrifying. Right out there not thirty feet from my window is a
pileup of bodies that would make the defensive line of the Denver Broncos
blush. It’s like some supernatural force has snatched up thirty random skiers
and dumped them in a little pile by my patio. Then it hits me. That
supernatural force is yours truly. I am naked before the world, and the world
has taken notice. And it is terrifying, the harm a man can do just by being
naked. I’m thinking somebody needs to make that an eleventh commandment.

Out of respect
for the wounded, I decide to make my exit as graceful as possible and ease on
over into the bathroom, where I pour myself a bubble bath and sud it up while
rehearsing legal arguments in my suit against the paparazzi magazines. It may
be that I drift off for a bit here, since when I come out of the bathroom in a
complimentary robe with the belt done up tight, my suit is hanging in the
closet and my clothes are on the bed all wrapped up in a little paper bow. I
get dressed and polish the boots up nicely with one of those little kits they
leave you on the bathroom counter. Get to feeling so pristine and bored I
figure I’ll give Darling a call. Like most of us, I just can’t seem to get
enough of the insurance industry.

Unfortunately
I seem to have been separated from Darling’s number sometime during my trip
across the continent, so first I call up information in Manhattan and get a
woman who calls herself Jill. Actually she’s sitting in an office in Calcutta, she tells me, and she manages to get me Jean, who after some negotiations puts
me through to Darling. I say hello, but that’s about all I manage to say,
considering he starts squawking about his career and his filing cabinet and who
knows what else. I tell him to slow down and try and speak a little more
distinctly. He tells me that if I don’t return the Shore Madonna folder
immediately, he’s out of a job. Almost starts sobbing right there on the
telephone.

“I’d honestly
like to help you out, Darling,” I say, “but unfortunately I’m in Vail, Colorado doing a little skiing.”

Turns out he
may not be a big winter sports person, Darling, since what I’m hearing is dial
tone. Which fortunately does allow me to call up information and ask to speak
to Jill again. I get passed around to a few Indian girls with British accents nearly
as perfect as Eralda’s until I get to developing a little courtly accent of my
own, coming out with these high-class o’s like perfect little smoke rings until
I’m more or less Duke Willie by the time somebody finds me Jill, whose real
name is apparently Sumatra, although we’re talking with a hundred thousand
miles between us and I may be mistaken. Twenty-seven years old, happily
married, she says, and it’s a hundred degrees and raining in Calcutta. I tell
her all about the snow up there in Vail, Colorado and ask if maybe she’s got a
direct line in case I find myself in an emergency. She doesn’t, she says, and
can’t keep talking anymore since sometimes the boss will listen in for customer
service reasons and might dock her salary from four rupees a day to three
rupees or whatever it is. So I wish her a pleasant evening, she says it’s
morning and gets me Jean again, who puts me back through to the kid with a
grunt.

“Must have
been a bad connection there, Darling,” I say. “Maybe it’s the altitude, I don’t
know. Anyhow, you were saying.”

“I want my
file back,” he says, “or Brattle Brothers will take action.”

“Of course
they won’t, Darling, because you’re sure as hell not going to tell them you
misplaced part of a client’s file. And not only have you misplaced it, you’ve
been handing out photographs of a client’s painting. Which brings us to the
principal reason for my call: exactly how many photographs of the Madonna have
you distributed to the general populace?”

Through the
phone I hear what sounds like a dying squirrel.

“Since I can
count on your confidentiality,” I say, “it might be better if you knew that the
Madonna has been stolen. I’ve been hired by Harry Shore to find it and save
your employers some money, but in the meantime both I and your employers would
appreciate it if you stopped advertising.”

“She’s his
daughter
,”
he says. “I didn’t think….”

“You sure
didn’t,” I say, “and the beautiful Fernanda happens to be a leading suspect at
the moment. Although she is something, isn’t she?”

He sighs, and
I do feel sorry for him. Hope he’s lit a cigarette. God knows the kid needs his
little pleasures. “She knew everything about movies,” he says. “We talked for
hours.”

“We’ll get to
that,” I say. “First I’d like to know how many photographs there were.”

“Just two,” he
says. “Plus the other one you and I found.”

“The one you
gave her was in the folder?”

“Yes.”

“And nobody
else has been around asking about that painting?”

“No,” he
sighs.

“Maybe you
need to cut out a little early today, kid. Maybe take a little stroll through Central Park. What’s the weather like over there?”

“Rain.”

“Apparently
it’s raining in Calcutta too.”

 “I can’t
believe this,” he says.

“Global
warming,” I say. Then I tell him I want him to call me at the hotel in Vail if
anyone approaches him looking for information about the painting. He says he
will, I tell him we’re in this one together. He sighs some more, and I tell him
that if we play our cards right, we might just come out of this thing alive.

“One last
question,” I say as I lie back on a feathered pillow, deathly tired again after
the bus rides and transcontinental conversations. “I’m thinking of last lines,
death lines. You remember
Psycho
?”

“Hitchcock or
the remake?” he says, sounding more tired than I’ll ever be.

“You
disappoint me, Darling,” I say. “In any case, I’ve got a little something
that’s been bugging me. Janet Lee in the shower. Does she get in a last line or
not? It’s been a while.”

“No, he just
stabs her.”

“How about a
little tune? Isn’t she whistling something as she washes?”

“No, it’s just
the sound of the water and then you hear her screaming. The effect wouldn’t be
the same if she were whistling.”

“You have a
point,” I say. “The last lines are the toughest ones. Can just about ruin a
perfectly good death scene if you don’t get it right. Lots of good deaths out
there, very few good death lines.”

“Obi-Wan
Kenobi,” he says, perking up a bit. “
If you strike me, I will become more
powerful than you can possibly imagine.
”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad?
That’s poetry.”

“That’s the
problem. I’m searching here, Darling.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
.”

“Cassidy or
the Kid?”

“Cassidy.”

“
For a
moment there I thought we were in trouble.
”

“Pretty good.”

“What the hell
is this all about, Willie?”

“I don’t know.
I guess I wish I’d gone out with more style. Although the truth is that even
till the end I couldn’t believe it was really happening.”

“You lost me
again there,” he says.

“Story of my
life,” I say as I hang up the phone.