“Excuse me, young man,” she said, “but would you mind helping me get my clothes out of the dryer? My lumbago is giving me fits.”
Isaiah piled her still-warm clothes on the table. Her entire wardrobe seemed to consist of muumuus, gym socks, and white panties big as parachutes. Isaiah folded the towels.
“I’m Myra Jenkins,” she said, “but everybody calls me Miss Myra. You’re Isaiah, aren’t you? I’ve seen you around. You’re a very nice young man, always neat and polite, none of that rough talk. You’re a little young for my Brenda but I wish she’d met you before she got involved with Bernard. I knew that man was a no-good bum the moment I laid eyes on him but Brenda married him anyway, not that she had a lot of choices, being on the homely side. They got married over the weekend and Brenda was as beautiful as she was ever going to be. The ceremony went fine and the reception did too except they delivered the wrong cake. A sorry little coconut thing that said ‘Happy Birthday Sheldon’ on it.”
“That’s too bad,” Isaiah said. He wanted to get out of there and do his laundry later but it was too late now.
“Of course, Brenda being Brenda there had to be a major tragedy,” Miss Myra said. “The wedding presents were stolen. Must have been thirty or forty of them, all wrapped nice and everything. Poor Brenda. She cried her eyes out.”
Isaiah stopped folding. “What happened?” he said.
“Oh, the hotel didn’t have the reception room ready and we didn’t want folks with presents in their laps while Bernard was fumbling with his vows so we put them in a room we rented. You know, for Brenda to get made up and such. Well, after the ceremony we came up to get them and they were gone. It was such a shame. Poor Brenda. I say that every day.”
“What did the hotel security people say?”
“The security man said the hotel wasn’t liable. What else would he say?”
Isaiah thought for a moment and said, “What’s the name of the hotel?”
The Blue Waves Resort and Spa had seen better days. A plastic sailfish hung crookedly over a table full of brochures. The blue carpet with gold crests on it was worn in places, the blond wood furniture spotted with watermarks and cigarette burns. Isaiah smelled lemon Pledge, vacuum exhaust, coffee, and mop water.
Isaiah and Miss Myra took the squeaking, clanking elevator up to the sixth floor. “That’s our room, 604,” Miss Myra said, nodding at the door and sounding puzzled. “Is this what you wanted to see?”
When they got back to the lobby they were met by a young Asian woman in brown slacks and a bright yellow blazer. She had a wide face and small eyes, her limp hair parted in the middle, her complexion as pebbly as the surface of a basketball. She looked at them like they were the line in front of her at the DMV. “Can I help you?” she said.
“We’d like to see the security supervisor,” Isaiah said.
“You mean Ed?” she said, as if they were making a silly mistake.
“If that’s his name.”
“What do you guys think of the blazer? The color is really in for spring.”
“It’s not that bad,” Miss Myra said.
“You’re being nice. I look like a jar of Chinese mustard.”
She said her name was Karen Mochizuki. She led them to the basement and down a long harshly lit hallway that smelled heavily of bleach, industrial washing machines groaning through the walls. “You’re getting a rare behind-the-scenes look at hotel security,” she said. “It’s not all glitz and glamour, you know. Gotta stay sharp around here. You never know when Al Qaeda might try to blow up the gift shop.”
Miss Myra thought the supervisor must be low man on the hotel totem pole. His office was cramped and painted a high-gloss beige like a restroom, the ceiling crowded with ductwork and electrical cables. The man himself was seated at a gray metal desk, leaning back with his hands behind his head.
“Come on in,” he said without getting up. “I’m Ed Blevins. Please, sit-sit, we’re not formal around here. Let me guess. You’re here about the stolen presents. It’s Mrs. Jenkins, isn’t it? And you are-”
“A friend,” Isaiah said.
Miss Myra wondered if Ed was auditioning for a part in a movie about rednecks with his Hitler haircut and Mr. Potato Head ears. His short-sleeve white shirt was straight out of the hamper, his cheap striped tie stiff as the dorsal fin on that sailfish.
Ed sat up, smiled sympathetically, and put his hairy knuckles around his coffee cup. “Ma’am, like I told you before, I’d compensate you for every last one of those presents but hotel policy is hotel policy. I must have said it a thousand times to a thousand different guests. The hotel is not responsible for stolen items. It was right there on the rental agreement and there’s a sign in every room too. I mean, what else can we do? Right, Karen?”
Karen was standing with her back to the door, her arms folded across her chest. “If you say so, Ed,” she said.
“These kinds of thefts are common as bums at a soup kitchen,” Ed said, yawning. “Even happens at the Marriott and the Hilton. Karen, could you sit down, please? You look like a Secret Service agent.”
A duffel bag that said HUMMER on it was on the Fanta-orange couch. Karen picked it up, held it like a dead rat by the tail, and dropped it straight to the floor. She sat down and said: “This okay, Ed?”
Ed paused, inhaled deeply, and exhaled through his nose. Miss Myra thought she could hear him counting to ten in his head. She was annoyed with Isaiah. He’d brought her here and hadn’t said a word.
“Ma’am, it’s like I told you before,” Ed said, “this guy had you in his sights the minute you walked in, probably dressed up like a tourist, maybe even said hello to you. These guys are slick, let me tell you. Then he waits until you’re at the wedding, gets in your room, gets what he wants, and is in the wind before you or anybody else knew what happened. You almost have to admire the guy. He was a real pro.”
“How did he get out?” Isaiah said.
“How did who get out?” Ed said.
“The pro. How did he get thirty or forty presents out of the room and out of the hotel without being seen?”
“Good question,” Ed said, like he was responding to a kid on Career Day. “But try to understand, this hotel has a hundred and eighty rooms, twelve ground-level exits, and four more to the garage. No way two people can cover all that. Right, Karen?”
“If you say so, Ed,” she said.
“Was there anything on the surveillance cameras?” Isaiah said.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Ed said. “The system was down for the whole weekend. Damn computers. What can you do?”
“There was more than one thief,” Isaiah said, “and they were amateurs.”
Karen cleared her throat.
“I’m not following,” Ed said.
“One person couldn’t get thirty or forty presents out of there, not without being seen. There were other guests and housekeepers around. There had to be two of them and they weren’t professionals. A pro wouldn’t have taken all the presents, especially the big ones. They’re hard to carry and there’s no point stealing a punch bowl unless it’s Waterford crystal and this isn’t Beverly Hills. A pro would have gone for the smaller ones that might have had jewelry or electronics in them. No, these were amateurs.” Isaiah looked directly at Ed. “And they were employees.”
The washing machines were still groaning but the room seemed to go quiet. This was too much tension for Miss Myra. She wanted to go home and watch Shonda Simmons and where was Isaiah getting all this? Was he making it up?
Ed had his lips pursed like he was kissing his mom. “Now that’s a very serious charge you’re making,” he said. “I hope for your sake you can back that up.”
“The employees knew which room had the presents in it and when it would be empty,” Isaiah said. “They’d have access to key cards so getting in was no problem. They got the presents out of the room by stashing them in another room and then they took them out of the hotel a few at a time in something like that Hummer bag.”