A plastic door key was required to activate the elevator. My master key worked like a charm. The door closed and I ascended.
I met one matron on the penthouse level. She was dolled up, apparently heading for dinner. This being New York, she avoided eye contact with me. After all, we hadn’t been introduced.
I knocked on the car dealer’s room door. Rapped several times, then used the master key.
The place was empty. I scrambled around collecting bugs, which I tossed in an attaché case I had brought along for that purpose, and was finished in ninety-five seconds flat. Standing in front of the door, I called Willie. Who knew who would be standing out there when I opened this door? Years ago Willie had met the guest as he opened the door of a room he had just robbed — that twist of fate sent him up the river. He was supposed to call me if anyone showed up in the hallway, but I wasn’t willing to run on faith, not with him half potted.
“Anyone out there?” I asked when he answered.
“Hey, dude, I’ll call you.”
“Right.”
I took a squint through the security glass anyway, saw no one, and opened the door. Corridor was empty. Walked to the adjoining suite and repeated the procedure.
When I had all the bugs, I used the phone by the wet bar in the third suite to dial Royston’s suite. No answer. I dialed each of the other two in turn. The telephone rang in each suite until the hotel’s automatic message system picked up.
Without further ado I marched down the hall and proceeded to scatter the bugs through the three suites in places the maid and guests were unlikely to discover them. About the only rule was to avoid placing them by a television or radio speaker or near a water faucet or toilet. It didn’t really matter where in a particular room the tiny microphones and transmitters were — the computer would synchronize the audio if two or more bugs picked up the same conversation. The operator could filter out extraneous noise picked up by the bugs or be selective in which bugs he wanted to monitor. Unless we left them on continuously, the batteries in each unit would last about ten days, more than enough for our purposes. Our ability to turn the units on and off remotely made them impossible to sweep with conventional gear unless they were transmitting.
Standing in front of the elevator twelve and a half minutes after I arrived on the floor, I called Sarah.
“I’m on the red level. The bugs are in place. I have to ride the elevator back to the level above the lobby to catch a regular one. Give me one minute, then turn on the cameras on this level. Then call Dorsey’s room. See if she’s there.”
“What will I say if she answers?”
“Ask her to confirm her dinner reservation. I’ll call you from downstairs.”
The elevator arrived and I stepped aboard for the trip down. Unfortunately Willie couldn’t monitor the surveillance camera on that floor, since I hadn’t put a tap on the coaxial cable. No time to do it now, even if I had another cable tap, and I didn’t.
I bailed out on the so-called balcony level, which had its own lobby with meeting rooms leading off in various directions. My choice of floors was not a good one. This lobby was jammed with people, too, although they appeared somewhat more sober and subdued than the crowd around the bar on the floor below. Apparently many of the convention committees were meeting here, wrestling with things like credentials, the platform, and so forth.
I stood by some sort of artificial potted plant that some of the conventioneers had watered with beer and called Sarah one more time.
“She doesn’t answer her phone. Perhaps she’s in the shower.”
“Did you do the cameras on twelve?”
“No. I’ve lost my Internet connection. Do you want to wait?”
“No.”
Without a lookout on the floor, I was playing Russian roulette darting in and out of Dorsey’s suite. The sooner I was out of this building, the better.
I took a regular elevator to twelve and marched along the hall to Dorsey’s room. Rapped three times loudly. No answer.
“Room service,” I called in what I judged to be the proper volume.
When I received no answer I took a deep breath and used the master key.
The door opened, and I surveyed the room before I entered. Indeed, Dorsey had popped for a small suite, with a sitting room with wet bar, a bedroom with a king-sized bed, and a bath off the small hallway leading between them.
I stepped in, pulled the door shut, and stood poised, ready for anything. When nothing happened, I did the tour. The place was empty.
Wasting no time, I put a bug behind the head of Dorsey’s bed and one under the counter of the wet bar. I had to short Royston two bugs to have these for Dorsey. He would have felt slighted if he knew, but I hoped he never would.
I had just placed the bug under the bar when someone knocked on the door. “Maid!”
Before I could get to it the door clicked, then opened.
Thank heavens it wasn’t Isabel from Puerto Rico. “Oh,” she said. “So sorry. Turndown service.”
“I’m just leaving, thank you,” I said, and left carrying the attaché case.
In the hallway I stole a chocolate chip cookie from her cart and pocketed it for later. We thieves have no morals.
A couple was waiting by the elevator. I joined them, then followed them into the elevator for the trip down.
“Where are you from?” the lady asked. She was in her sixties, a dried-up wizened thing wearing a choker of plastic pearls.
“California, originally.” See, I can tell the truth on occasion.
“We’re from Arkansas. My husband is a Southern Baptist minister.”
He beamed at me. I smiled at him.
“What religion are you, young man?” she asked seriously.
The tone of her voice must have irritated me a little. As the door opened at the main lobby, I said, “I’m a nudist,” and made my escape.
“A Buddhist!” she exclaimed. Behind me I heard her ask her husband, the Southern Baptist, “Did he say he was a Buddhist?”
Scanning for Dorsey, walking confidently, assuredly, I headed for the side entrance where I had entered the building. I was five feet from the door and a clean getaway when who should come through it but Dorsey O’Shea! Through a side door, no less! What was the world coming to?
“Tommy Carmellini! Of all people! My God, what are you doing here?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A man followed Dorsey through the door. He was maybe mid-thirties, with collar-length blow-dried hair and wearing an expensive silk suit cut in the Italian style.
I ignored her question and exclaimed, “I thought you were yachting in the Med!”
“It didn’t work out, so I came home.”
“I see.” I turned toward the man. “And you are?”
“Just a friend,” Dorsey stated firmly. She turned to him. “Carlo, I’m so sorry, but I need to talk to Tommy. Perhaps later. Would that be okay?”
Carlo was no fool. When you hang with rich girls you must get used to being brushed off when a better deal arrives unexpectedly. “Of course, darling. Call me.” He squeezed her hand and was out the door before I could blink twice.
“One would think he did exits professionally,” I observed as Dorsey led me across the lobby to an empty couch far removed from the bar and piano player.
She sat down as close to me as she could get — thigh to thigh — took my hand, and looked me straight in the eyes. “What are you doing here, Tommy?”
I looked straight back into her deep brown orbs and said, “They’re having a political convention in New York in the age of terror to make a statement to the world. The feds have pulled in security people from all over.” Notice that I didn’t say that I was one of the security people, I merely implied it. For a spur-of-the-moment falsehood, I thought this was one of my better efforts.