Eight Ball Boogie - Declan Burke [62]
I strolled out through the foyer, slow, so my legs wouldn’t give way. The secretary was still furious. She really needed to get out more, or maybe invest in a battery-powered appliance.
“You’ve lipstick on your teeth,” I said, and heard my second new swear word of the week.
19
I strolled up the street, settled into the window table of a café diagonally across from Conway’s office. The place was clean, quiet, the tables covered with white-and-red checked plastic cloths. The smile the waitress flashed was also plastic but she didn’t look anywhere near as fresh as the tablecloths. The coffee wasn’t warm mud but it wanted to be.
The street was thronged but I’d have spotted Helen Conway with one eye tied behind my back. She emerged from the office with Frank in tow, disappeared around the corner. I left the waitress a tip – don’t get married ‘til you’re thirty-five – and disappeared after them.
They crossed the street, turned another corner onto the old bridge, tripped up the steps of the Connaught Arms Hotel. I gave them a minute to get comfortable and then I tripped up the steps of the Connaught Arms Hotel too.
The foyer was warm and humid, sultry as Faulkner’s socks. The gold lamé decoration tacked up over the reception desk bore the legend ‘Happy Xmas’. Silver disco balls were suspended from the dusty light-shades, each one boasting a sprig of mistletoe. Off to the right, an avocado three-piece suite that had seen better days in a far better place menaced a ring-marked coffee table.
The windows stretched from floor to ceiling, affording a dirt-streaked view of the river as it frothed over the weir beneath the bridge. In the distance, maybe a quarter mile away, I could see the new bridge. If I squinted I could make out the bench where I’d been sitting just before taking my header into the river, so I didn’t squint. In front of the windows were long, shallow ashtrays filled with sand, cigarette butts and one or two plastic plants.
Off to the left, the doors of the hotel bar were wide open and the Christmas spirit was going down in doubles. I crossed the foyer to the reception desk, standing sideways on so I could watch the door of the bar. I tapped the bell on the desk, which was the receptionist’s cue to ignore me completely. The collar of her gleaming white blouse was stiffly starched but pretty much everything else sagged. Her chins had chins and her make-up foundation was threatening to collapse under the weight of her expectations.
I coughed, polite. Still she leafed through the sheaf of papers on the desk. I coughed again, a more phlegmy effort. She pushed back the rimless spectacles that had slipped to the end of her nose and stared, imperious.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
“I’d ask for the manager, only a Hilton like this couldn’t afford any other staff after meeting your demands.”
“I am the manageress.”
“Then start doing your job.”
She pushed the spectacles back again, only this time they hadn’t slipped.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re excused. I’d like to see a room, please.”
She looked me up and down, not liking what she saw. I didn’t like what she was looking at. I hadn’t shaved in two days, my clothes were still damp, and the last time I looked in the mirror a kitten had been using my face as a trampoline.
“I am sorry. We have no vacancies.”
“Last time this place was booked solid, the Black and Tans had burned out half the town. But that’s not the point. I don’t want a room, I want to see a room.”
She was fuming. Actually, she was a fuming ventriloquist. Her lips were clamped tight but the words clipped out, vocal chords on semi-automatic.
“I don’t understand.”
“I want to know who’s booked the room, the one I want to see. Show me the register.”
She made an involuntary movement towards the leather-bound register that lay open on the desk in front of her. Then she caught herself, smoothing out the wrinkles of her thought process.
“I will have to ask you to leave. If you refuse, I will call the Guards.”
“Call them.