The Big Dirt Nap (5 page)

Seven

Rachel Page looked like a lot of women I’d known in New York—curly chocolate-brown hair, long, like a Portuguese water dog’s, overinflated lips, and the semi-Asian look that came from one too many
procedures
. After cooling my heels for twenty minutes in his waiting room, I was finally admitted into Bernie Mishkin’s office. Rachel led me to the inner sanctum, pointed me toward a tufted, faux leather wing chair, and quietly left, backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.

One wall was filled with sepia and black-and-white pictures of the hotel during its construction. And autographed head shots of celebrities who’d stayed there in the forties and fifties. I walked around the room, seeing who I recognized.

Mishkin breezed in through a second door to the right of his enormous desk. “Celeste Holm was my favorite. A beautiful woman. And nice. Always treated the staff well. That’s how you can tell who’s got class.”

I sat down and he automatically offered me a drink. I declined, citing my long drive home after our meeting; he poured himself a tall tumbler of something brown.

“Rachel takes good care of me,” he said, pointing the bottle toward the outer office. “My sister.”

That explained it; I’d had him pegged for the curvy, Hooters-type assistant who couldn’t use the computer, couldn’t write a letter, but could sharpen his pencil pretty good.

“She’s been looking after me for the last few months, since Fran died. All my life really, ever since we were kids in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn, Connecticut?” I asked.

“There’s only one Brooklyn.” To Mishkin, there was.

It had been a long time since anyone had asked me where I went to high school, and even though he had twenty-five years on me, we spent a few minutes going over old Brooklyn landmarks.

He looked the same as he had the previous evening, yards of light-colored fabric wrapped around his substantial frame in what had to be a custom-made suit, a white-on-white shirt, ivory silk tie, with a gold tie tack, and a pocket hanky origamied into four perfect points. To his credit he wasn’t wearing a pinkie ring.

I was anxious to get on the road, so I got out my pad and launched into some of the questions I’d jotted down earlier that afternoon after my session with Sveta. The staff had been tipped off that I was a FOB, a friend of Bernie’s, and plied me with snacks and drinks all day, so I’d sat bundled up by the fifties-style pool guzzling complimentary virgin Marys and making notes.

Mishkin took his time answering, giving me generic answers, telling me to ask Rachel, and repeatedly steering the conversation back to Nick Vigoriti and the
tragic loss of such a fine young man
.

“As I said, I really didn’t know him. We just had a brief conversation at the bar.” Why was Mishkin grilling
me
? Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be interviewing him?

“I understand why you might not have wanted to say anything last night.” Had Hector told him the maid had seen us together? “I’ve known Nick all his life, and he could never resist a pretty woman,” he said, laying it on.

I’m sanguine about my looks. Sometimes I look good and other times, when I’m stressed or tired, I look like the Olsen twins’ less normal older sister—bad hair and wild eyes. Bernie leaned in conspiratorially, waiting for me to spill some nonexistent beans. I didn’t have any beans.

“So, were you the driving force behind getting the corpse flower for the hotel?” I continued.

“It was Fran’s idea.” Now I felt guilty for pressing the issue. Fran Mishkin had read an article about the titan arum and had thought it would be a good gimmick for the hotel. She had also suggested an exhibit some years back in honor of their neighbors on the reservation. Bernie called it, an “In-jun exhibit.”

“They didn’t understand publicity like she did. She was a real marketing genius. We would have gone under years ago if it hadn’t been for my Franny.” His eyes went glassy, either from the loss of his wife or from the amber liquid he’d just gunned.

“This probably isn’t a good idea. I’m sorry to have brought back bad memories.”

“My memories of Fran are good. It’s just all so fresh. She’s only been gone a few months. And now Nicky . . .” The bluster was gone and Mishkin was left staring at his ice cubes. I mumbled my thanks and got up to leave.

“Please, Ms. Holliday. Sit down. I’m sorry. Nicky’s death has hit us all so hard.” He looked at me for confirmation.

Not me,
I thought.
I hardly knew the guy.
And if Mishkin was so broken up about it why did he keep bringing it up? I was tired of denying I knew the guy, so I decided to play along.

“Well, Nick
was
an extremely attractive man.” I looked down at my folded hands, feigning grief, to see what Mishkin would do.

“See, I knew you two were up to something,” he said, wagging his index finger. His eyes twinkled and he smacked his lips, his bonhomie returning. He poured himself another generous drink, and again tilted the bottle in my direction. Again I passed.

“It all happened so fast,” I said, alluding to our totally fictitious yet torrid relationship. I struggled to remember some detail about Nick, or something he’d said to me, to keep the ruse going. “He did tell me that you two hadn’t spoken for a while.”

Mishkin’s smile froze. He drained his glass and made little patterns in the condensation. “Did he say why?” he asked, doing a rotten job of sounding casual.

Ka-ching. I’d touched a nerve. “No. But I know he was sorry about that. I think he was hoping for a reconciliation or a resolution.” It wasn’t a total lie. Nick did say he’d talk to the Mishkins for me, but it was about the greenhouse, not whatever it was that had caused a dark shadow to pass across Bernie Mishkin’s wide face. So was all of Mishkin’s hand wringing and hair tearing a fake?

With eerily perfect timing, his sister buzzed him as I chewed over the uncomfortable possibility that Bernie Mishkin was not only not grieving for the dear departed Nick, but that he also knew more than he was telling either me or the charming Detective Winters about Nick’s death.

“Sorry,” he said, holding a button down on the phone. “International call, London, can’t be helped.” He nodded periodically but said little. Over the phone, I heard someone yelling.

If Mishkin was implicated in Nick’s death, I didn’t want to know about it. That was a matter for Stacy Winters, and the other cops, not me. He motioned for me to wait, but I took the opportunity to escape.

Back in my room I threw my things in my bag, still wondering what the hell that meeting was all about. Wasn’t it after midnight in London? And I’d forgotten to ask about the damn greenhouse. I called his office as soon as I remembered, but Rachel said he was gone for the day.

“That was fast,” I said. “Is there any way I can reach him?”

She didn’t respond. This was one closemouthed family. Unlike my own vocal, trusting crew. If someone had called my mother and asked where I was, she’d probably give him directions, whether she knew him or not.
This nice man called. He didn’t say what he wanted. Yes, dear, he did say something about being an escaped convict
.

I checked for messages one last time and left two for Lucy, one on her cell and one at her office. The recorded message still claimed Lucy would be in central Connecticut for the weekend. That was odd. Unlike me, who records one outgoing message and doesn’t record another until I get a new machine, Lucy changed hers with neurotic frequency, every time she took a trip, and sometimes just for fun. Either this was one hell of a tryst or she’d been called out of town for an even bigger story. That was also possible, given her job, and it was the option I was starting to root for.

One last call before I hit the road—I dialed my pal at the
Springfield Bulletin
to report on the corpse flower’s progress, or lack thereof.

“Jon, how’s it going? Listen, I don’t think this baby is going to pop for another two or three days. Do you really want me to stay up here that long? It’s only seventy miles, I can always drive back when it does bloom.” I told him what I had and he agreed there was enough pre-bloom material for a Sunday feature, so I closed down my computer while we were still on the phone.

“Guess what? Some guy was killed here last night. I talked to him before it happened.”

“Well, it’d be damn hard to talk to him after. You’re yakking to me about a potted plant when there’s been a mysterious death at the old hotel,” Jon said. “You will never be a newspaperman. Spill.” Jon must have seen too many old Rosalind Russell movies when he was young and impressionable, and liked to affect a 1940s newshound’s lingo. It was quite endearing. I told him as much as I knew.

“What does Lucy think?” he asked. “She’s got a nose for news.”

“She’s not here. She stood me up.”

Jon and Lucy had met a few months back, and he nursed a puppy-dog crush on her, which she wisely ignored. He knew about the accident on 95 and offered to contact the local hospitals to make sure she wasn’t laid up somewhere. Part of me thought he was overreacting, but in the back of my mind I felt like a lousy friend for not having thought of that; I was too busy working her love life into the equation.

“Good idea. My cell signal goes in and out on the Merritt,” I said, “but call me if you hear anything. I’m coming home.”

Eight

I’d wasted most of the day waiting for Mishkin, but it wasn’t a total loss. Apart from my free session with Sveta, Mishkin had instructed the front desk to comp my stay. Since Lucy and her corporate credit card had never showed up, my friends at the
Bulletin
would be happy about that.

I went outside and waited for the parking attendent to bring my car. Two young guys, one in a gold vest and another exuding all the health and charm of a heroin addict, stood there lighting up. I tried to stand where the secondhand smoke wouldn’t drift my way.

The valet pulled my Jeep around to the front of the hotel. I handed him a couple of bucks and pulled out, fiddling with my cell and hands-free cable. I hated talking while I drove, but if Jon or Lucy called, I wanted to know as soon as possible.

There’d be congestion near the hotel, but the Merritt Parkway should be clear by the time I got on it and with any luck I’d be home by 10 P.M.

Can a road be sexy? If it can, then the Merritt is one sexy road. There’s a pitch and sway to it that can make you feel like you’re dancing with two tons of steel. The more times you drive it, the better you know when to stay to the right and when to lean to the left. And the trees are beautiful. You’d never think that most of the time you’re only five minutes away from a Home Depot or a Wal-Mart. There’s even a spot near one of the few gas stations where a cell tower has been camouflaged with fake branches—
Pinus cell-ostrobus,
someone had dubbed it—to make it less offensive.

I was about an hour into the drive and the light was fading. Through the trees the sky had turned pink, then orange, then inky blue. The Jeep’s headlights turned on automatically. And so did those of the car trailing a little too close behind me. I checked the speedometer. I was going sixty-five mph, fine for me at this hour, and if he wanted to pass, why the hell didn’t he just do it? No one else was around. All right, be cool. Some drivers like to have a lead pony, especially at night. I sped up a tiny bit. He kept pace.

A friend of mine used to be a regional sales rep for a pharmaceutical company and found herself driving all over the East Coast at odd hours of the day or night. She bought an inflatable man doll, and would strap him into the passenger seat for nervous-making occasions just like this. She’d put sunglasses and a hat on him, and throw one rubber arm over the back of his seat to make it seem like she wasn’t alone. When she started calling him Ronald, we all got a little worried.

Just pass, you moron.
I tensed up, then relaxed a bit as we swung around a long curve and I saw a third car behind the guy trailing me.

I knew there was a Mobil station ahead on the right, and decided to stop for a pee break and a diet Snapple, and to lose my convoy. I signaled well in advance of the stop and pulled in to the middle of the rest area, beyond the pumps, the dog run, and the minimarket.

First one car, then the other, pulled in. They killed their lights fast, and crawled to the far end of the rest area.

Nine

No one got out of either car. And no interior lights suggested that the drivers were either looking at maps or making phone calls. I repositioned my side-view mirror to get a better look at what they were doing. Nada. Were they together? Had they stopped because of me? Why would I even think that? I wasn’t usually the jittery type.

I grabbed my bag and casually,
I thought,
jogged toward the presumed safety of the service station’s market. So casually I forgot to lock the car. I fished around in my pocket, found the keys, and locked it with the remote, accidentally hitting the panic button that’s supposed to keep robbers away, but really only scares the car’s owner. No one even reacted. So much for panic buttons.

At the gas pumps, a young woman was finishing up. She looked about Amanda’s age, with multiple piercings in the ears, but not in the eyebrows or nose as far as I could see.

The girl tore off her credit-card receipt, then stuck her head in the driver’s-side window and poked her sleeping passenger. “You owe me twenty bucks for your share of the gas.” The friend mumbled something and twisted herself into an even more contorted position than before. “Missy can sleep anywhere,” the girl said to me, when she saw me looking.

“It’s a gift.”

She finger-combed her long thick hair straight back from her forehead and it flopped right back into the same position, framing her face when she dropped her hand. “You know how far Greenwich is? We’re driving to Missy’s parents’.”

They looked like Greenwich. Blond, blue-eyed, good kids really, but at that stage of life where they could go either way. The piercings could move from her ears to her tongue or further south, and the artfully streaked hair could turn to a modified Boy George with splashes of green or pink if my last visit to the East Village was any indication of current trends.

Missy and her friend were only half an hour away, and I was twenty minutes from Springfield, but I took my time giving her directions, chatting and keeping one eye on the two cars at the end of the lot. What the hell were they doing? Or didn’t I want to know? And when did I get so nosy? I’d heard there were rest stops on the highway that were unofficial hookup spots but had never really believed it. And if that’s what they were up to, what was it to me?

The girls finally drove off, and I entered the minimarket, setting off the shrill buzzing doormat, startling me and rousing the small dark clerk who was catching some zzz’s behind his Plexiglas shield. His goldtone name badge read RAVI.

He nodded at me, as much to wake himself up as to suggest anything remotely like customer service might be forthcoming. Then he pointed to the back of the narrow building, where the restrooms were, before I’d even asked. I still had a funny feeling about those two cars outside. I was in no hurry to sequester myself in a small locked room, so I killed some time reading the nutritional information on a package of Ring Dings, then started mindlessly plucking items off the shelves as if I did all my grocery shopping at the gas station: water, diet Red Bull—the nice jumbo cans—nuts . . . I drew the line at Slim Jims, even though there’d been a time in my life when I’d considered them one of the basic food groups, along with beer, muffin tops, and martinis.

When I was reasonably sure I was just being ’noid and the drivers outside were merely having a snooze, a squeeze, or a snort, I headed for the ladies’ room. I grabbed a handful of my shirt and used it to keep from actually touching the doorknob. Not bad. Pretty clean actually, but that didn’t stop me from meticulously layering the seat with toilet paper before sitting down. I know, it’s neurotic, but the lessons of youth are never quite forgotten—I had a friend who always traveled with her own over-the-door hook so she’d never have to put her handbag on the floor of a public bathroom. Undoubtedly something her mother once taught her.

I’d just unzipped and dropped trou when through the opened window I heard a car start to pull out and then stop after only a minute. I heard a door slam. Moments later the doormat’s jarring buzzer sounded. Trapped in a toilet, I could be in big trouble. I sat there paralyzed. What could I use as a weapon if I needed one? A plunger? A toilet brush? Only if I touched them and that was a big if since whatever was outside was probably less deadly than either of those germ-riddled items. I was staring at the bathroom’s small shuttered window, trying to picture my hips squeezing through, when I realized I was being ridiculous—the victim of an overactive imagination. I zipped up, washed up, and threw some cold water on my face, patting dry with a rough paper towel. This time, I wrapped another towel around the doorknob to let myself out. The door opened into the bathroom and I held it ajar with my butt and turned to watch the balled-up wad of paper bank shot into the trash.

“Nice shot.”

I spun around in the tiny bathroom, slamming my shoulder into the door and my hip into the doorknob and coming face-to-face with the large pockmarked nose of a man with no visible neck. His double and triple chins melded into his shoulders and chest and I imagined that naked he must look something like the Michelin Man. Not a pretty picture.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I tried to get past him and we did that little dance you do when two people are trying to be polite and accidentally keep blocking each other’s way, only this didn’t feel accidental or polite.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll just scoot by.” I skipped around him fast, my fingers grazing the cold leather of his jacket, which was so voluminous it must have cost two cows their lives. I was ready to make my exit when Ravi, the clerk, called to me.

“Lady, lady, I am ringing your order.”

Michelin Man flashed an oily grin and positioned himself right behind me, between me and the door. I gave him a weak smile and moved closer to the counter to put as much distance between us as possible. He didn’t seem to be buying anything; he just stood there, his frankfurter fingers laced in a loose cat’s cradle, his stubby thumbs tapping together to some internal melody.

“If you’re just getting cigarettes or something, you can go before me,” I said, “I have a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t smoke. Filthy habit.” He shrugged and showed me three candy bars buried in his laced fingers. “Sweet tooth.” I was stuck.

Inside my pocket, I separated my keys so that there was one in between each finger of my right hand. That way if I had to throw a punch, it would do more damage. I’d read that in a women’s magazine somewhere and hoped it was true.

“The big bottle of water is on sale, wouldn’t you like that one instead?” Ravi asked.

“Sure, why not?” I said, watching him leave his perch to get the water. Every item was rotated twice, to find the bar code. It was an excruciatingly slow process.

“When you spend over twenty dollars, you get a free lotto ticket,” he said, finishing up the sale. “Would you like to pick some numbers?”

Here I was, trying to get the hell out of there, and this guy was bucking for employee of the month.

“It’s okay, I’m not much of a gambler and I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I snapped, taking out my wallet and clumsily nudging out my credit card with my left thumb.

Ravi flipped the card over. “Please, miss, you haven’t signed your card.”

“There’s a picture of me on the front of the card, what else do you need?” I was instantly sorry for being rude.

“Not much of a gambler?” Michelin Man said. “That’s too bad. I, myself, am a big believer in luck.” I hoped he didn’t think he was going to get lucky with me. What was with these guys? Was I sending out horny, lonely signals? First Nick, then Bernie, and now this manatee.

I couldn’t manage a signature with my left hand, so I reluctantly let go of my keys to finish the transaction.

“Thank you very much, Miss Holliday,” Ravi said, handing me my receipt.

Excellent. Now the Michelin Man knew my name. Luckily it was a fairly common one. If he was a crazed stalker, there’d be three or four other victims named Holliday before he got down to the
P
s in the phone book. Surely the cops would find him before he got to me.

He still hadn’t moved, and now I was grateful that the clerk was taking so long, double-bagging my purchases for the mad dash to my car. I redid the key arrangement in my pocket and planted my feet in case I had to land a punch and make a run for it.

Just then, the cavalry arrived. We heard them first. It sounded as if a helicopter was landing outside, then the sputtering died down. The doormat shrieked again and five guys who could have been the defensive line for the Hell’s Angels’ football team came in. The Michelin Man’s face dropped; so did poor Ravi’s. I was the only one grinning like a happy idiot.

One guy camped out in the doorway oblivious to the fact that standing there kept the doormat buzzer going. The other four scoped out the dining options. The biggest walked over to the shelves near the coffee machine. He picked up a cellophane-wrapped Danish and dropped it as if it was radioactive.

“Hey, man. I can’t eat this crap. This stuff’ll kill you.”

Ravi looked hurt. “I have the PowerBars,” he offered weakly.

“I know a great diner!” I said, a little too loudly. “I do.” I quieted down and tried to sound seductive instead of like a basket case. What the hell, three other guys thought I looked hot that day, even if they didn’t have the most discriminating taste. “It’s only ten minutes from here,” I lied. “My girlfriend owns it. I’ll take you.” I flirted with the big one closest to my nemesis, who looked a lot less threatening now.

That was how I got my Harley escort out of the service station, away from the Michelin Man, and all the way to Babe’s Paradise Diner.