Free Live Free

In The Lobby

“I lost it,” Majewski declared.

Fuentes looked daggers at him as the house telephone rang.

The mystery fan said, “I’m not calling you a liar—there’s no evidence of that. Did I call you a liar?”

Majewski shook his head as the house telephone rang again.

“All I’m saying is seventy dollars of that money belongs to the woman in seven seventy-seven. You lost seventy dollars of her money. You’re going to have to make that up. Ten belongs to ’Cisco and ten to me. You’re going to have to make that up too.”

The house telephone rang yet again, rather pettishly.

“Damn right,” Fuentes said.

A sub-assistant manager called, “Joe, will you please get that phone?”

“Yes, sir!” Majewski answered with unaccustomed smartness, and picked up the handset, happy to escape.

“This the bell captain?”

“Yes, sir,” said Majewski, who was not.

“Captain, I want you to do me a favor. Somewhere around there’s a young lady in a white raincoat. Garth. Gee, ay, are, tee, aich. Garth. Stout. Blond. Look around. You see her?”

Majewski glanced at the overstuffed vinyl furniture and the guests. “No, sir.”

“She’s probably in the lobby, but she might be in one of the bars, or even outside on the sidewalk. I’d try the street-level bar first. Could you have one of your boys find her and tell her to come up to room seven seven seven?”

“Yes, sir, I will, sir. If she’s not around, I’ll give you a ring, sir.”

“She’s around. You got pay booths. Look in them too. She might be making a call. Young, stout, blond, white raincoat, Garth. Got it?”

“Got it, sir,” Majewski said, and hanging up, turned back to his colleagues. “Look, I owe each of you ten, right?”

“Right,” the mystery fan announced firmly; Fuentes nodded.

“Okay.” Majewski drew out a money clip. “If I pay you, we’re square, aren’t we? The seventy’s between the woman and me.”

“Right,” the mystery fan said again, this time more hopefully.

“Fine.” Majewski handed him two fives and Fuentes a five and five singles, emptying the clip. “Now I want you and ’Cisco to do something for me.” He described Candy. “Her name’s Ms. Garth. Find her, and when you do, come tell me.”

“What for?” the mystery fan asked.

“Because I want to talk to her, that’s all. The guy on the phone gave me a message for her, all right? So look around.”

Fuentes went into the bar of the Gourmand Room. It was dark, smoky, and packed with the late crowd. Three bartenders in red jackets sweated behind the bar. A pianist in a midnight blue ruffled dinner jacket grinned and played, the brandy snifter on his instrument well stuffed with bills. Under a blue spot, a busty woman in a low-cut blue gown sang:

“HELL!” shouted a dozen enthusiastic drunks.

“Mees Garth,” sang Fuentes. “Call for Mees Garth!” The pneumatic blonde gave him a disgusted look.

A man in a check suit left the bar. “What do you want with Miss Garth?”

“Got a message for her.”

“Give it to me. I’ll see she gets it.”

“She’s in the powder room?”

The woman near the piano kissed her fingers to her audience.

She hitched up the blue gown, which became a coat that hid most of her startling cleavage. When she stepped out of the blue spot, the coat was no longer even blue. Her audience clapped and whistled, and someone called, “Hey! Finish it!”

“I have to see a man about a bed,” she shouted back.

Another man stepped away from the bar. “How about having a drink with me first?”

“I’ll take a rain check, and I’ll see you real soon. Ozzie, what’s happening?”

Fuentes said, “You are Mees Garth? Go with me to the captain’s desk. We ask there for Joe.”

“Right. You better come too, Ozzie.”

Barnes whispered, “Aren’t you going to tell the piano player he has to split with you? I was watching, and there’s plenty in there.”

Candy shook her head. “Mostly ones and fives. You don’t get big dough in a joint like this, because how the hell are they going to get it on their expense accounts? They’ve got to pad it on, call it a cab ride or something, and the company back home will only stand for so much.”

“You should have had half, anyway. It was more than half for you.”

Fuentes said, “One floor down, Senor, Senorita. In lobby.” He held the elevator doors for them.

“Ozzie, asking isn’t getting. He’d have bitched like hell and ended up giving me twenty bucks, and the next time I wouldn’t be welcome. The way it was, I got a couple of free drinks, and I’ll get star treatment any time I come back. Golden oldies—did you notice? Nothing real raunchy. They loved ’em. If I hadn’t had to leave, I could have taken my pick of four or five johns, and with any luck he would have given me fifty or a hundred.”

The doors slid open, and they crossed the lobby to the bell captain’s desk.

“Joe’s looking for you,” Fuentes said. “I get him.”

Barnes said, “I wonder what she wants?”

“Who?”

“That chicky at the desk. Tam. Tweed skirt.”

“What do you care?”

“When you find out what this Joe’s after, whistle.” Barnes straightened his tie and pulled down his jacket.

“I know she’s here,” the young woman in the tweed skirt was saying. “I phoned, and you connected me.”

“She doesn’t wish to see you,” the clerk said. He used the world-weary tone of one who drops a polite pretense. “She called and said we weren’t to give out her room number, and she’s not taking calls. If you went up there—if you found out the room number—you might make a scene, but you wouldn’t be admitted.”

“But this is Serpentina! She’s got to see somebody!”

Barnes cleared his throat. “You’re looking for Madame Serpentina? As it happens, I’m a friend of hers.”

The young woman looked around at him. Her face was lively rather than lovely, but it was a very attractive liveliness, reminiscent of blindman’s buff played at a fifteenth birthday party. “Can you take me to her? Will you?” The sub-assistant manager seized the opportunity to move away.

“Not so fast,” Barnes said. “I don’t want to inconvenience her, not unless there’s a reason for it. But I might be able to talk her into seeing you. Let’s go over there,” he gestured toward one of the vinyl couches, “and discuss it. Who are you?”

“I’ve got a card,” the young woman said. She opened a purse nearly as big as Candy’s and jerked out a compact, a glasses case, and a package of nonnutritive gum. “Here they are!”

The card read:

with the usual address, telephone number, and so on.

“Miss Duck?” Barnes murmured uncertainly, returning the card.

“That’s Ms. Duck,” the young woman said, “and no quacks. Sandy Duck. If you’re really a friend of Madame Serpentina’s, call me Sandy.”

“Call me Ozzie,” Barnes told her. “Madame Serpentina does.”

“Swell.” Sandy Duck held out a hand in a knit acrylic glove.

Barnes shook it solemnly. “Is that a magazine or a newspaper? Hidden Science and Natural Whatever It Was?”

“It’s magazines. Or I should say they are. We publish them in alternate months. Hidden Science in January, March, May, and so on, and Natural Supernaturalism in February, April, June, and like that. It has to do with shelf life. The supermarket kids will leave the January-February issue of HS standing right next to the February-March issue of NS. Or anyway, we hope they do, and sometimes it works.”

“Supermarket kids?”

“The ones that straighten the magazine racks in the supermarkets. That’s where we sell, mostly. To women in the supermarkets. What’s she like?”

For a moment, Barnes thought wildly that he was being asked about his ex-wife.

“Madame Serpentina,” Sandy explained. “She’s getting to be quite famous, you know. I’ve met a dozen people who’ve met her, but you’re the first who claimed to know her well.”

“Well, she’s very beautiful … .”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Black hair, dark complexion, dark eyes, and she has a wonderful figure. You think of her as tall, but she isn’t really. Just medium height, maybe two or three inches taller than you are.” He paused to reflect. “She doesn’t exactly have an accent, but I don’t think English is her native language.”

“Don’t you know?”

Barnes shook his head. “It isn’t something you can ask somebody right out, now is it? She doesn’t talk about herself—or only once in a while. Sometimes she doesn’t talk at all. She’s imperious, very queenly.”

“Do you—” Sandy broke off to look at the fat girl looming beside her.

“Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We’re off to see the wizard.”

“Who was Joe, and what did he want?”

“It’s Jim, I thought it was. He’s up there. He phoned down, and we’re supposed to come up. Say bye-bye to your little friend.”

Sandy jumped up. “Is that where she is? Madame Serpentina? Seven seventy-seven?”

“Ozzie, who is this?”

“I’m from Hidden Science. One of our readers tipped me that Madame Serpentina was here. I telephoned, and a man’s voice said to come over, that he’d get me in to see her.”

Candy pursed her mouth. “That must have been Jim.”

“Who’s Jim?”

“A friend of ours. Maybe you ought to come with us.”