13
Walker stared at the facade of the big hotel as Stillman drove past it. There were doormen wearing green comic-opera general’s uniforms with gold braid and shiny-brimmed hats. Cars were pulling up and letting off passengers, then being driven away by other men wearing different, short-coated green uniforms that seemed to be patterned after some kind of cavalry. Stillman turned onto a side street and into a parking ramp. “If you’re sure this person is in there, and you know the name she used to register, why not just call the police?” He hoped Stillman had noticed he had not conceded it was Ellen Snyder.
“I have,” said Stillman. “In their infinite wisdom, they have determined that we don’t have enough evidence to give them the right to raid a hotel room and roust the guests.”
“Just using a false credit card would seem to me to be enough,” said Walker. “What’s the problem?”
Stillman shook his head. “It’s how we know it’s a false credit card. They’ve sniffed our story, and smelled the fine hand of someone like Constantine Gochay. This makes them nervous. They can’t be told exactly who he is, because that would force them to pursue the issue of what felonies he’s committed to find out what he knows.”
“Are you kidding?”
“You can’t blame them. All this has zip to do with the public safety of the citizens of Chicago. Ellen Snyder— guilty or innocent—is the problem of an insurance company in San Francisco, and the abuse of computer security systems is the problem of a well-known but distant government in Washington.”
Stillman found a parking space with the car’s nose against the wall in the first level of the garage, and turned off the engine. They got out of the car, but Stillman said, “So now we investigate. Get in the driver’s seat.”
Walker moved around the back of the car to the driver’s side and got in.
“Adjust the mirrors so you can see the doors of the elevator.”
“Okay,” said Walker. “Now what?”
“Now I go upstairs to the lobby. I call the room of Mrs. Daniel Bourgosian. If I get her on the phone, I tell her I’m waiting for her downstairs, ready to help her. If she’s innocent, she’ll come see me. If she’s a thief, she’ll come out that elevator on this level and head for her car, or come out on a lower level and drive right past you to get to the exit.”
“What if she’s being held against her will?”
Stillman shrugged. “Then she won’t be the one to answer the phone. They’ll still have to come down that elevator to get out. They won’t want to have to bullshit their way through the lobby, because I’ve just told them that’s where I’ll be.”
“What if they come? What am I supposed to do about it?”
“See if it’s Ellen Snyder and try not to get shot.” Walker waited for something more specific, but his eye caught the rearview mirror and he could already see Stillman heading for the elevator. Walker reached for the door handle, then stopped.
He didn’t believe that Ellen Snyder would come down in that elevator. In the first place, she was innocent. In the second, nobody could hold a grown woman—a smart grown woman, at that—in a fancy, crowded hotel without her screaming loud enough to pop their eardrums and shatter the wine glasses in the dining room. That left—what? It left nothing. The reason Stillman had posted him here was not so he’d accomplish anything. It was just to keep Walker out of the lobby, where Ellen might see him and recognize him. Stillman was preserving the remote possibility that he would corner her by surprise, then scare her into confessing. Walker sat back and relaxed, then readjusted the mirrors so he didn’t have to crane his neck to keep an eye on the elevator.
It opened ten minutes later. Stillman emerged and returned to the car. “Come on,” he said. “I guess we’ll just have to lower ourselves and do this the easy way.”
They emerged from the elevator in the lobby and Walker waited until Stillman was at the pay telephone beside the gift shop. Then he moved to the front desk. There was a clerk helping a couple check out at the far end of the counter, and a young woman shuffling some papers at the near end. She would be the one. The telephone just behind the counter rang. She picked it up and said, “Front desk.” She listened, then said, “I’ll ring for you.”
Walker watched her consult her computer screen, then punch 3621 and hang up. She came toward him with her professional smile. He said, “I was wondering if there was a good Chinese restaurant within walking distance.”
She whisked a small map from under the counter and held her pen like a magic wand to point to an intersection. “Right here is Won Dim Sum, which is my favorite.” The pen seemed to rise higher into her hand by itself, and she made a quick circle at the spot, then quickly drew a line from the restaurant that extended into a circle around the hotel and handed him the map. Her mouth tightened into a closed-lipped smile to signal that the conversation was over.
“Thanks,” he said, and walked across the lobby and followed Stillman around a corner to another hallway that led to a second set of elevators.
Stillman stepped inside with him. Walker said, “Thirty-six twenty-one,” and Stillman pushed the 3 button.
When the elevator stopped, Stillman walked smartly up the hall. “This kind of thing is best done quickly,” he said. “There’s not a lot that’s likely to happen as time passes that will make things better.”
Walker turned to look behind him to see if there was anyone to hear. “How about silently? Isn’t that best?”
“There are only so many precautions I’m willing to take,” said Stillman. “Stand here.” He pushed Walker into a position by the door with his back to the elevators, so he blocked the view. Then he leaned down to examine the lock. After a moment he produced a pick and a tension wrench from his wallet, fiddled with the lock, and pushed the door open.
Walker took a final look up and down the hallway, then stepped inside after him and closed the door quietly.
Stillman was standing in the middle of the room, turning and turning slowly. He stopped, facing Walker. “Don’t touch anything.”
“Don’t worry,” said Walker. “When I’m with you, I never touch anything. What’s wrong?”
“The bed’s messed up, the bathroom light is on, there are towels on the floor.”
“I guess she’s messy.”
“No suitcase.” He used a handkerchief to open the closet door. “No clothes. She hasn’t checked out or they wouldn’t have rung the room, but she’s gone.”
“Okay,” said Walker. He stepped toward the door.
“Hold it.”
“What?”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. Look carefully at everything in this room.”
Walker stared at the bed, the bathroom, the coffee table, the armoire that held a television set above and a bar below. “What am I looking for?”
Stillman said, “Any sign that Madeline Bourgosian is Ellen Snyder. Anything at all.” He opened the upper section of the armoire to reveal the television set, then tested the bar cabinet to see if it had been opened. He moved toward the bathroom.
The bar had been the place that Walker had considered most promising, so he looked for something else. The bed. He stared closely at each of the pillows, trying to spot a blond hair, but found nothing. Maybe women didn’t lose the occasional hair while they slept, the way men did. Probably if there were any, Stillman would find them in the bathroom sink in front of the mirror, where she had brushed her hair.
He pulled back the covers of the bed. If he were to leave something accidentally in a hotel room, that was where it would have been. He sometimes sat on the bed while he was dressing, and usually laid things out there when he was packing. The awful, complicated patterns on hotel bedspreads often made small objects hard to see in dim light. He saw nothing, so he ran his hand over it to be sure.
He moved to the telephone on the nightstand and looked from the side at the little notepad the hotel had left, but he could see no imprint from a sheet that had been torn off. He peered into the wastebasket beneath the little
