‘She get many visitors?’
‘Lots of guys around the restaurant and bar who wanted to be visitors, if you know what I mean.’
‘How about anybody who actually got into her room?’
‘One. This little bastard. Thought he was pretty important. Like they say, you can tell a lot about a guy by the way he treats the help.’
‘He have a name?’
‘She called him Howie.’
‘Howie? Howie Ruskin?’
‘Oh, yeah. Come to think of it, that’s what that candy-ass desk clerk called him. Mr Ruskin. He some kind of big deal?’
He obviously didn’t understand the implication of what he’d just told me.
Ruskin. Howie Ruskin. I’d never met him, but I’d heard way too much about him. In college he’d been a supporter of our party. Then, or so the story goes, he switched parties because a girl he loved dumped him. She’d been on our side. In revenge he spent his years as a political saboteur doing everything he could to demolish us. He was especially good at opposition research and at using the press to spread rumors. He was equally good at setting up traps for unwary politicians. His specialty was using women (or men on a few occasions) to seduce said politician and then outing the relationship. This had worked at least nine times in critical elections. It had brought down six of the nine, which was a damned good record. Throughout this time he’d paid a ghostwriter to concoct three bestsellers for him.
Then there was Howie himself. Good Catholic boy/man in his late-thirties now. He was five-four and weighed around two hundred pounds. He was losing his hair and insisted on fitting his ball-like body with the latest fashions, said fashions being designed for teen-gaunt bodies. Once or twice a year you could see him on TMZ or in one of the supermarket rags on the arm of a model or a starlet. A publicist had always set it up for him. I was told that, pathetically, Ruskin had convinced himself these women actually wanted to go out with him.
My favorite Ruskin story involved Mensa, the organization for people whose IQ registers in the top two percent of all humanity. He qualified as brilliant; the problem was he also qualified as one of the most obnoxious self-promoters the group had ever had to deal with. There were so many stories about his jerk-off behavior at various functions that his publicist had pulled him out of the organization.
Among his other problems was his gambling addiction. By all accounts he was a terrible poker player but insisted on spending hours with some of the pros. He’d lost a lot of money — he’d also tried to welsh by claiming he’d been cheated. One of the pros, obviously a man of little sensitivity, sent a goon after Howie baby and gave him a black eye. Another apparently suggested he might meet with a fatal accident if he didn’t pay up within twenty-four hours. It was whispered that at any given time somebody in Vegas had it in for him.
The one thing his publicist hadn’t been able to do was disarm him. Because of his connection to the other side and its connection with judges all over the country, Ruskin was always armed with a Glock, insisting that ‘they’ (meaning us) were out to get him. Any time he got hassled by law enforcement he just made a call, and whoever he talked to made a call and Ruskin went back to spending his time wooing fabulous babes — another one of his problems.
‘Is he staying in the hotel?’
‘Four thirty-eight.’
‘How many times did you see them together?’
‘I work four to midnight. The last week I’d say I saw them together every night around dinner time. And a couple of times in the bar.’
Howie Ruskin. I was going to meet the bastard.
‘You see her with anybody else?’
‘Hey, seems you’re getting a lot of talk for nothing. I’m a working man.’
I eased my wallet out of my back pocket and laid a fifty across his open palm.
‘I’ve seen her with about a couple dozen guys since she was here who tried to pick her up.’ The grin gave him a satanic look. ‘She’s probably the most beautiful woman who’s ever been in this town, if you want to put it that way.’
‘Any of them succeed?’
‘I don’t think so. She got rid of them pretty fast. She wasn’t much of a flirt. She’d shut them down fast. She wasn’t mean or anything; she just wasn’t interested.’
This was the woman who’d come on to Robert so openly and seductively. But that had been her job. Robert’s mind had gotten caught in his zipper and he hadn’t figured it out until it was too late, despite my warning.
‘Did you ever see the senator in the hotel?’
The grin again. ‘Talk about somebody whose ass is in a sling, huh?’
‘So did you ever see him here?’
‘No.’
‘Was she ever involved in any kind of incident?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Any kind of trouble or anything. Did she just have a nice, quiet stay?’
‘Quiet except for everybody who wanted to sniff her panties.’
‘How about her room? Have the police been up there yet?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Could you get me in if they haven’t?’
He took a deep breath. ‘That’d get me fired for sure.’ He was working both sides of the street. He was genuinely worried about losing his job while setting me up for a big raise in pay. ‘You’d really have to pay me.’
‘How much?’
‘Three hundred.’
‘Two.’
‘Two seventy-five.’
‘Two-fifty.’
‘Hell, I guess I might as well take it.’
After I paid him all I had was a five and two ones in my wallet.
‘How about putting my suitcase in my room after?’ I was still lugging it along.
‘Oh. Yeah. Right.’
He took it and surprised me by not asking for more money.
Except for a maid in a light-blue uniform pushing her cart down the hall, this end of the fourth floor was quiet. I could see from here that the room had not been sealed, though likely it would be very soon. In the elevator Earl Leonard — he’d finally told me his name and it hadn’t cost me a cent — had begun breathing in tight little spurts. There was the gleam of sweat on his wolf face. He really was worried.
‘I’m going to make this easy for you, Earl,’ I said now. ‘You let me in and then you take off. If I get nailed I’ll say that I was able to open the lock.’
‘You know how?’
‘Maybe.’ I was good but not great.
‘I’d appreciate it. And you won’t mention me?’
‘Not to anybody.’
So now we stood at the door. He looked both ways, advertising that we shouldn’t be doing what we were doing. When he got it open he pushed it in and said, ‘It’s all yours, man.’
Then he was double-timing it to the elevator. What he hadn’t remembered and what I hadn’t wanted to bring up was that the hall was undoubtedly on security cameras. But I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. There’d be no reason for anybody to check the tape. I expected to stay no longer than a few minutes in her room.
The room was done in contrasting blues. Twin beds, an open closet area packed solid with clothes and at least a dozen pairs of shoes below. Cosmetics and perfumes clouded the air with intoxicating aromas and dresses and blouses were strewn across one of the beds.
The phone rang once and scared the hell out of me. It was as loud as a shriek in the hotel room.
I needed thirty seconds to relax and then I went back to work, conscious of needing to get the hell out of there.
I quickly went through both the desk drawers and the closet and didn’t find anything useful. The small blue carry-on piece of luggage shoved under the same bed as the clothes was another matter.