Chapter 10 Continued
II.
At a guess, Bosco would say that it was at least fifteen years since he'd last spared either Karen Tuttle or her favorite britcom a second thought, and yet as he crossed the lobby of the Bridgeview he couldn't get Fawlty Towers out of his head.
The layout of the "reception area" didn't even remotely resemble that of the fictional hotel, but there was something about the place, something about the ambiance that seemed to put you into a kinder and simpler frame of mind. A very un-New York frame of mind. Compared to the snazzy postmodern gleam of the Melrose, this place looked pretty backward, something the owners seemed to have purposely overstated. You were supposed to come in off the street and feel like you'd stepped through some kind of time warp, one that came out in some quaint little mid-century English town.
As little interest as Bosco had in interior design, he thought it worked; the place had a touch of subtle, nonthreatening class the bigger hotel couldn't match. The lobby was small, pleasantly stuffy, and preternaturally quiet. The predominate smells were lingering breakfast - coffee, toast, bacon - oiled wood, and air freshener. It was all a little too big to be called a Bed 'n Breakfast, but it was a cozy little country house all the same. It was almost as if the Bridgeview was designed not only to be an oasis in the New York rat-race, but also to evoke contempt for places like the Melrose - the bustling big-city hotels with their constant inflow and outflow of high-paying businesspeople and social bigshots. And of course that endless background symphony of ringing phones, cells, and pagers.
The only sound here was the lazy, wooden rhythm of a grandfather clock that sat just to the left of the staircase, a staircase that looked to be the only means of transportation between the hotel's three floors - there were no elevators here. You had to pump those God-given muscles up a winding, lushly carpeted set of stairs, and God only knew what the rooms were like. Like something out of a kid's storybook, probably. Cozy little Hobbit-holes.
These were not usual thoughts for Maurice Boscorelli, needless to say; there was a time not so long ago when he would have found about six different ways to call such observations queer. Now he just accepted them and was glad for them. Comparisons to old TV shows notwithstanding, the place just felt good, it smelled good, and God knew he was entitled to a little pick-me-up right now. To hell with Aaron Noble - just soaking up this atmosphere was enough of a high to justify coming here. Shit, it was almost zen.
On the wall to his left was another framed photograph, this one a huge, breathtaking panoramic view of London's Tower Bridge. Underneath was another little plaque, this one containing a blurb about Iris and Tom Hendrickson's first hotel, the original Bridgeview, located within spitting distance of Tower Bridge. So that, at least, explained the hotel's oddly out-of-place name; it was Iris and Tom's legacy to christen their places of business Bridgeview, regardless of whether or not the place was actually located near a bridge. Which this one wasn't.
Directly ahead was the main desk, which was as large and imposing as the woman who was currently standing behind it. The top of the desk came almost to Bosco's upper-chest, and the clerk behind it seemed impossibly tall. Halfway to seven feet at a glance, and Bosco realized with some surprise that the woman was none other than Iris Hendrickson herself.
Only this Iris appeared to have aged about thirty years; it seemed the photo in the foyer was just a tad out of date. Gone was the long, frizzy dark hair - now as gray as a mule, Iris had cut most of it off and pulled what was left into a tight bun at the base of her skull. She was still tall and still slim, but where the Iris in the photograph looked like she'd be at home slinking down a modeling runway in a skimpy little Victoria's Secret number, this Iris looked stringy and tough and world-weary. A lot of her incredible height came from the fact that the floor behind the main desk was raised slightly, but a lot of it was still pure Iris. She might have been six-one, maybe even six-two barefoot, and the raised floor added a good four inches to that.
Equally intimidating was the massive ginger cat sitting next to her. It was a scruffy, ancient thing with a flat, pugnacious face and a red-and-white spotted bandana tied jauntily around its neck. It crouched on the end of the desk in what appeared to be a state of semi-sleep; every so often the eyes would open stealthily, apparently whenever it thought nobody was looking at it.
Iris may not have aged very gracefully in the years between the foyer photograph and now, but the sunny movie-star smile was the same. When she saw Bosco approach she looked up and flashed it at him, and he was not surprised to find himself returning it with equal feeling. You just sort of had to - she was one of those people with one of those smiles, and though she was far past her prime, Bosco was betting she'd broken a fair number of hearts before settling on lucky little Tom Hendrickson, he of the unibrow and bad comb-over.
She also didn't seem to take exception to his appearance, which Bosco knew was slowly slipping across the line between merely disheveled and full-fledged bum.
"Hello!" she said brightly, crossing her arms on the oversized desk and leaning over it toward him. "Don't tell me, let me guess now" - she narrowed her eyes and pointed a playful finger at him - "I know who you're here to see."
Bosco shrugged, a bit self-consciously. "Who?"
"You're here to see Aaron Noble. Aren't you?"
Bosco's smile frayed a bit at the edges, but he kept it on. "Uh, yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I am." He laughed and shrugged again, and again it was a bit self-conscious. "How'd you - ?"
Iris waved impatiently. "Oh, you look like a writer, don't you? Or some such man of the world. This place has seen its share of scruffy intellectuals over the years, I'm afraid - too many for me not to know one when I see one. No offense intended." She broadened her smile into something that added, very clearly: But I didn't need to tell you that, did I?
Bosco shrugged a third time, and again he felt himself smiling back at her almost reflexively. Even if Iris had meant offense, Bosco didn't think he would have been able to stay angry with her for very long. She might have made a pretty good cop - she'd be a natural with the velvet glove. Kind of like Faith. Send Iris into an interrogation room or out on a domestic disturbance call, get her to flash those teeth, and she'd smooth things over right quick.
Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you? his Bosco-side(a.k.a. the angry midget) piped up irritably. Eyes on the prize!
"Now," Iris said softly. "Mr. Noble likes to keep a low profile, and we've already had a few fortune-hunters and autograph-seekers show up at the door. But I can tell you're not one of those. The gawkers, they always have that heady starstruck look in their eyes, don't they? And they always look guilty. But you're here to offer some moral support. Am I right?"
Bosc nodded. "Right."
"I thought as much the moment I saw you. Several of Mr. Noble's contemporaries have already dropped in to see him since all that unpleasantness at the Melrose." She shook her head. "Nasty business, that."
"Yeah, nasty," Bosco heard himself say. This whole thing was started to feel very strange, very Alice-in-Wonderland-ish, and he didn't know why. Iris's manner, for one thing. And probably because it just felt so good here. The smell of the place, the look of it, the clock tick-tocking away in the corner - it was almost hypnotic. It was zen. Bosco had reached zen only an hour after dragging around as a miserable, self-pitying wreck. It probably wasn't healthy to go from one extreme to the other so fast. Probably made you a little loopy.
Hell with it - might as well enjoy the ride. That was what he was really here for anyway, wasn't it?
"I'd also take from your appearance that the rain hasn't finished with us just yet," Iris went on, eyes sparkling. She was teasing him in a way that came very close to flirting, he was quite sure of that now, and Bosco found himself wishing - absurdly, and almost against his will - that Iris Hendrickson was about thirty years younger and single.
"No," he said. "No, it's still coming down pretty hard out there."
Iris nodded. Then, suddenly, she was all business, leaning back from the desk and looking down at him imperiously. "Now, then," she said briskly. "As for you, I would guess that you are a ... hmmm, now ..." The smile tried to peek through at the corners of her mouth again. "A wildlife photographer?"
Bosco blurted a laugh. "Uh, no, I'm -" he began, and then broke off suddenly, eyes widening.
He was bitterly amused - and utterly appalled - to realize how close he'd just come to identifying himself as Officer Boscorelli, NYPD.
"I'm just a friend," he finished lamely. "We've ... uh ... I've known Noble ... uh ... Aaron, for years. Since, uh, since I was in college. When he was teaching. I was ... uh ... in one of his classes."
Riiiiight. That sounded real convincing. Oh, you still got it, guy. Sharp as a tack.
Bosco shrugged inwardly. So he wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders. So what? He was still about seventy percent hungover, and he wasn't here in a serious frame of mind.
And if Iris thought anything sounded suspicious, it didn't show. "Mr. Noble needs all the friends he can get right now," she said. Then she leaned over the desk again. "To tell you the truth, when he first came here, I thought him a little standoffish. A bit stuck up, you know. But then I realized what the poor man had just suffered through. Sounds to me like he was digging up some prime dirt on the New York Police, and some of the high mucky-mucks didn't much like it. He was at the center of something big, by the sound ... and look what almost happened to him for it. Like something out of a movie, isn't it? What was that policewoman's name? The one everyone's talking about? Maria Cruz?"
Bosco felt his mouth twitch. For no reason he could fathom his mind's eye presented him with the now-familiar image of Cruz, bloodied and kneeling in the middle of Noble's room, her left arm hanging from its pulverized shoulder like a broken tree branch.
He had seen that. He'd been there, he'd seen it with his own eyes, and Iris Hendrickson here had no idea. No idea at all.
"Something like that, I think, yeah," he said, a trifle hoarsely.
On the desk next to Iris, the big ginger cat stirred. It stood up, stretched luxuriously, and yawned directly at Bosco, sending a current of rancid, fishy breath right into his face. He winced.
"I see you've noticed our permanent resident," Iris said dryly as the cat settled back into its previous state of suspended animation. "My husband insists on keeping him around, I don't know why. Some gobbledegook about 'lending the place character.' Tom calls him Captain Jack. After Captain Jack Aubrey, from Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin books. Mr. Noble's quite a fan of those stories, isn't he?"
Bosco nodded cautiously. He'd lied once about his relationship to Noble, and he wasn't keen on the idea of cranking out more to support the first one. Even if that meant nodding and agreeing with anything Iris said. He didn't feel very cunning at the moment, and he didn't want her to decide he was just a "fortune-hunter" after all. Not because it would blow any chance at talking to Noble but ...
... but ... well, he liked Iris, and he didn't like lying to her. Lying had a way of coming around on you. Ask Faith Yokas - she'd tell you. Or ask Rose Boscorelli to recite her little bit of maternal wisdom - lies had a way of breeding lies.
"He did get a kick out of our naming a cat after the main character," Iris went on. "I've heard they're making a movie out of the books. Starring Russell Crowe." She nodded at the cat, who was still feigning sleep. "He certainly doesn't look much like Russell Crowe, does he?"
"No, he doesn't," Bosco said. And no, the cat did not look much like Russell Crowe. Bosco thought it looked more like Lieutenant Swersky, if it looked like anybody.
"He is quite the charmer, isn't he?" Iris said. "Mr. Noble, I mean - not old Captain Jack! I've read all his books, and he was good enough to sign my Blue Line Fever for me. I hated to ask ... you know, considering the circumstances, but I couldn't resist. And I'll tell you, I can't wait to read his next one."
Bosco smiled and nodded politely. Smiling and nodding politely seemed to be all he could do here. He knew that pretty soon he would have to cut in, bring Iris down out of the clouds and get to business, but he just couldn't seem to make his mouth work. He still felt strangely high. It was the hotel. That un-New York atmosphere. And Iris. She seemed to have mesmerized him. She was old enough to be his mother - hell, his grandmother, even - and yet he kept thinking of that picture in the foyer. Iris when she was tall, dark and gorgeous. He kept thinking of that blinding smile. The way she'd pegged his reason for being here the moment he walked in. And the smooth, breathy voice; Iris spoke in the soft, musical British accent Bosco (along with most North Americans) associated with culture and breeding.
Two words came at him out of some nether-region of his brain: liquid silk. That was what you'd call the sound of that accent. Liquid silk.
Bosco wondered - and not for the first time - if he might be going out of his mind.
"He's not here at the moment, I'm afraid," Iris said.
Bosco blinked stupidly, opened his mouth to ask her if she could please repeat herself, and then closed it when he realized that she'd done it again; for the second time in almost as many minutes, Iris Hendrickson had answered a question before he'd even asked it.
He recovered a bit faster this time. "Uh ... uh, I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?"
"Not a clue, I'm sorry to say. I'm not even sure when he left. Last night sometime, I think. He's been here ... four ... no, five days now. Goes out every night. Enjoys dancing, doesn't he?"
Bosco dearly wanted to tell her that he had no idea what the dumb bastard enjoyed and what he didn't, and didn't care to know. But he had his lie to protect. His cover-story. He was supposed to be one of Noble's pals. One of his scruffy-intellectual drinking buddies. "Yeah, he does," Bosco said reluctantly. He was still nervous about taking it too far; as a result his voice had become inflectionless, dead. "Usually."
"Have you tried reaching him on his mobile?"
"His what?"
Iris rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "I'm sorry. His mobile phone is what I mean. His cell."
"Uh, no. No, I think he must have turned it off."
"I'm not surprised," Iris said. Then she lowered her voice and gave him a conspiratorial wink. "He hasn't come back here yet. And I've been on this desk since six o'clock sharp this morning. I'd guess that he's eating breakfast at someone else's table." She gave him an appraising look and another impish smile. "I'm sure you know how it is."
"Yeah," Bosco said robotically. "I know how it is."
Iris peered at him. "I say, are you all right? You look a little pallid."
I say. She actually started a sentence with I say. She'll be calling me old chap next.
God, is this really where I am? Hanging around a hotel getting flirty with a woman twice my age just so I don't have to go back outside and face my fucking troubles?
"Never better," Bosco said in a more natural tone. Fun though it may have been - lies and all - it was definitely time to wrap things up and move on. He'd already lost all interest in talking to Noble; the little booster shot he'd gotten from the hotel was more than worth the trip. Much later, when he would have every reason to wish he'd never come within a mile the Bridgeview, Bosco would try to call up the hotel, Iris and her liquid silk accent, even her big, filthy cat, and clutch at them, draw comfort from them, remember them as the only bright spots in a terrible week that still had one or two very nasty surprises in store for him.
He started to turn away from the desk. "Look, forget it. It's not important anyway, I'll just -"
Iris held up her hand and shook her head emphatically. "No no no. Just hold your horses, now. I was away most of the day yesterday, and my husband was working the desk last night. He could tell you more. You never know - maybe Mr. Noble told him when he'd be back."
And before Bosco could tell her not to bother, Iris had turned and ducked back into what he assumed was the manager's office.
He sighed.
Well, you started this, didn't you? the angry little bastard in his head said sullenly. You needed something to do to kill time. Time's being killed right now, isn't it?
He checked his watch. Yes, time was being killed. Five minutes had died thus far, although it felt like he'd been in here longer. In any case it didn't matter. He turned and leaned wearily up against the desk, glancing around at the Bridgeview's lobby, eyes skimming over it all again: clock, Tower Bridge photo, spiral staircase, a sandwich board next to the dining room with a list of prices. Apparently, ordering a baked potato here would set you back seventeen bucks. According to the sign, they were "world-renowned" - Bosco guessed that for seventeen bucks a pop, they'd damn well better be. For that much, they'd better add about three inches to your dick.
It did remind him of something else, though - it was at least twenty-four hours since he'd eaten anything halfway decent. The prices here might be ridiculous, but the smell - the coffee, toast and bacon aspect of it, anyway - was making his stomach rumble. Since leaving his mother's place his diet had consisted mostly of pretzels, snack-sized bags of Doritos, and a microwaved cup of instant noodles that tasted more like the cardboard container than the "creamy cheddar" the label promised.
So there you had it - he'd found something else to do on this rainy Saturday. Go somewhere and top up the tank. It was 10:21 A.M. Somewhere in the city, Maritza Cruz was leaning up against an anonymous concrete wall in an anonymous neighborhood, writhing in the grip of a hellish fit of projectile vomiting while Bosco stood in the lobby of the Bridgeview Hotel, thinking he could go for the full round of breakfast - bacon, eggs and all. He thought he might be able to stretch the meal out to noon or so, and he was just starting to run down a list of possible places to grab a bite when Captain Jack attacked him.
At first Bosco wasn't completely sure what was happening. Something hit him on the back of the neck, followed immediately by a low, virulent hiss, which was then followed by a guttural, eerily humanlike warbling: "aaaoow-wow-wow." Bosco had never had much to do with cats, but he recognized it as the kind of warning moan that said the first little bat was just a warning shot, and if he didn't back down, the next one would take off most of his face.
Bosco wheeled around angrily. He wasn't afraid of the cat, but he was afraid of what he was going to find when he took his jacket off - the swipe hadn't caught any skin, but he had felt a very distinct ripping sensation at his collar.
"You little jagoff," Bosco said under his breath.
Jack merely looked back at him with an expression of lazy, murderous feline contempt. Insulting cats now, are you? that look said. My, my, you really are cracking up, aren't you?
The look made Bosco feel foolish, and the fact that a cat could make him feel foolish made him feel even more foolish. So it was back to the vicious circles and paradoxes again.
That made him angrier.
"If I find one mark on this jacket," he said quietly, "I'm gonna come back here and have your fat ass stuffed and mounted."
Jack responded by hunkering down on the desk again and folding his front paws in front of him in another oddly humanlike gesture, this one of defiance: I live here, asswipe. You don't. So do your worst.
Bosco was just getting ready to gently and discreetly shove the cat off the desk when Iris came back out of the office, her husband in tow.
Tom Hendrickson didn't appear to have changed as much as his wife in the years between the foyer photograph and now; his hair was gray and had thinned a bit more at the edges, but that was it. Beyond that he was the same stout little dude with the fishy lips, and he still had enough hair to keep the bad comb-over going. There was only one difference: Bosco didn't think he was quite as short as he appeared in the picture. Not much taller than himself, really. It was Iris. Iris and her height. She tended to throw things out of perspective.
"This," Iris said, gesturing at Bosco, "is a friend of Mr. Noble's. Mr. ..." She laughed. "Ah! I don't even know your name!"
"Boscorelli," he said. This time he caught the Officer before it could escape, but realized half a second later that he might have made a blunder just by telling them his name. Boscorelli was low on the list of disgraced Anti-Crime cops, but he was there all the same.
But neither Bridgeview owner seemed to recognize it. Tom grinned and stuck his hand out over the desk. "How'd you do?"
"Good, I'm good," Bosco said hastily as they shook. "Look, really, this isn't all that important, and I don't want to waste anybody's time - "
Tom waved at the air. "Oh, no trouble, no trouble at all." To Bosco his accent sounded cruder, less cultured than Iris's. Cockney, maybe. So it was a cross-class relationship, then. "You're one of Mr. Noble's friends, now, are you?"
"Yeah," Bosco said. He was suddenly very bored of this whole repetitive song and dance; the conversation was running in circles, and now that Tom was here the spell of the Bridgeview (and Iris) was entirely broken. It was long past time to get this over with and leave. "But you know, it's no big deal if he's not around. I can come back."
"He left last night, around about ..." - Tom's face scrunched up - "... around about half-past nine, I'd say. Probably headed down to the Crimson Lion. Your lot seem to really favor that place, don't you? Writers and such, I mean. Michael Crichton stayed here a few years back, you know, and I think he was a patron of the Lion, too. Place is an intellectual Mecca for them, I take it?"
Bosco offered a noncommittal nod.
"I was just telling Mr. Boscorelli that Mr. Noble didn't come back this morning," Iris said slyly. "Wink wink. Nudge nudge."
One half of Tom's unibrow lifted slightly. "Is that your oh-so-subtle way of saying he's got himself a little company?"
"It is, as a matter of fact," Iris said, and winked openly at Bosco. "Mr. Boscorelli took my meaning right away."
Tom laughed. "I'm afraid you might be mistaken there, my dear. You missed the fireworks yesterday afternoon."
"Fireworks?"
"Mr. Noble had a lady-friend," Tom said. "She dropped by yesterday afternoon and they had a big row right here in the lobby. She was a paramedic. Came right in here in full uniform. Parked the ambulance outside, came in here, and proceeded to read our Mr. Noble the Riot Act."
Iris looked scandalized. "No!"
"Yes. Called him everything but white. Said he was a big phony. A drug addict. A criminal. Then she said she never wanted to set eyes on him again, and never to call her." Tom turned to Bosco. "I imagine she was listening to all that rubbish about him on the news, and reached her own conclusions. All of these supposed connections to motorcycle gangs and drugs." He added hastily: "I don't believe any of it, myself."
But Bosco couldn't have cared less if Tom believed Noble snorted pure heroin and had sex with pigs to the tune of God Save the Queen. He was intrigued by that one word - paramedic.
He looked up at Tom with a faint smile. "Probably didn't catch her name, huh?"
"Mr. Noble's former lady-friend? I did, as a matter of fact. He and I had a little chat about it afterwards - I think he was a bit embarrassed about the whole mess and wanted to smooth things over. Her name was Zamboni. Or Zamfredo." Tom slapped his forehead. "Damn. It was Zam-something, anyway. Kim Zam-something."
Now it was Bosco's turn to raise the eyebrow. "Zambrano?"
Tom snapped his fingers. "Yeah! Yeah, right, that was it! Thought I'd be sure to remember that. I can't seem to remember anything for more than five minutes anymore."
"Early-onset senility," Iris said sweetly, brushing a lock of Tom's thinning hair away from his bald head and kissing the spot. "Right, dearest?"
"Right," Tom said dryly. He looked at Bosco. "So you know her, then? This fiery Ms. Zambrano?"
"Uh ... only ... uh, only through Aaron," Bosco said absently. It was an interesting little coincidence, but ultimately of no consequence to him. So Kim Zambrano had been seeing Noble. Which probably meant she'd been the woman on the balcony that day he and Cruz dropped in to remind the writer of his obligations. Life could be funny sometimes.
"I think she might even have come back to have another go at him last night," Tom said.
Bosco looked up. "What?"
"There was quite a lot of shouting coming from the parking lot just after he left." Tom grinned. "The devilish part of me likes to think it was Ms. Zambrano, back for Round Two."
"Poor man," Iris said. "Considering what he went through, I think the woman could have been a little more understanding." She gave Bosco another wink. "After all, you need infinite patience when dealing with men."
Tom chuckled. "I'll hold you to that the next time you start complaining about poor old Captain Jack," he said. At the same time he put a hand under the Captain's hairy ass and casually slid him across the desk, freeing up a ledger the cat had been lying right on top of. Jack made that mournful, just slightly creepy caterwauling noise again and tried to settle himself back again.
Iris gave the cat's hindquarters her own little nudge. "Get off!"
"Oh, leave him be," Tom said, in the tone of a man who has spoiled his children, knows it, and has resigned himself to it. "He might as well lie there, if he likes it so much."
Iris leaned down and spoke directly into the cat's ear: "Dirty thing."
Something just slightly bizarre happened; the cat appeared to take offense. Being threatened with bodily harm couldn't move him, being rudely shoved aside couldn't move him, but being called a "dirty thing" was apparently too much for the Captain's sensibilities. He stood up (pausing to take another long, kingly stretch) and then jumped to the floor. It was a fairly long drop for such a big and obviously over-the-hill cat, but old Jack touched down with the unconscious grace of a ballerina and sauntered away towards the office.
He fired a dark (and rather Swersky-ish) glance over his shoulder at Bosco as he went.
Bosco looked up at Tom and opened his mouth to ask a question; something the little man had said a moment ago had caught his interest.
But Iris cut in before he could utter a word. "I'd better not see the old bugger in the dining room again, Tom," she said ominously, rummaging for something behind the desk. "I found him there last night before I came to bed, sitting in the middle of Table Three like a little emperor. We don't need the health department down here sniffing around." She looked up at Bosco. "I'm sorry, Mr. Boscorelli. It's a madhouse here, isn't it?"
Bosco, now a little less than seven minutes away from a decision that would change the course of his day and possibly the rest of his life, thought to tell Iris that a place as sleepy as the Bridgeview didn't exactly qualify for the label of "madhouse." But he kept his mouth shut. In a way these two were sort of like something out of one of Karen Tuttle's beloved British sitcoms. Not Fawlty Towers, maybe, but something close. They were a pair of characters ... and he was betting it wasn't exactly an accident, either. More likely affectation. Quirky owners with exotic accents made for more atmosphere. Which in the end probably translated into more positive word-of-mouth reviews, more guests, and more money.
Now, what about the question? He'd been meaning to ask Tom a question just before Iris interrupted and threw him off track. So what was it?
He couldn't remember. Probably wasn't very important.
"It's all so very unfortunate for Mr. Noble," Iris said, still foraging for something behind the desk. "First that Maria Cruz person tries to murder him in his hotel room, and then this Ms. Zambrano emasculates him for all the world to see."
"Maritza, dear," Tom said gently. "I believe the woman's name was Maritza, not Maria. World of difference."
"Was it now?" Iris said, at last drawing a fat stack of papers from underneath the desk. "Maritza? Are you sure?"
"Yes, yes," Tom sighed. "But you don't say it like that, sweetness. You don't say Mare-IT-za. You say Mare-EET-za."
"I believe you're mistaken," Iris said gently.
"No, actually, I don't believe I am."
"I'm quite sure the name is pronounced Mare-IT-za, Tom, not Mare-EET-za," Iris said, now using a strained, don't-embarrass-yourself-you-twit tone that made Bosco smile, in spite of the fact that the subject of Cruz still made him distinctly uncomfortable. Particularly when it was raised by two perfect strangers, each utterly unaware that one of the heaviest players in the whole bloody drama was standing right in front of them.
Yes, indeed - life could be funny sometimes. Life could be oh-so fucking strange.
"Mare-IT-za sounds so crude!" Tom cried. "So ... provincial! You say it with a nice little Spanish flare! Try it with me now: MARE - as in female horse. EET - as in, what you do when you stuff food in your mouth. ZA - as in ... as in ZAP. I don't know. You're supposed to r-r-r-roll the R, too. Mar-r-r-reetza!"
"Do you remember when we were living in the apartment in Chicago?" Iris said pleasantly, thumbing through the forms she was holding with fidgety impatience. "Do you remember the nice woman who used to live two doors over? The one who used to walk the fat little Daschund every morning? Her name was Maritza Vasquez. She was Puerto Rican, as Spanish as you could want, and she used to pronounce her name Mare-IT-za."
Tom glanced at his wife and made absolutely sure she was occupied with her stack of forms. Then he turned to Bosco and rolled his eyes comically, a perfect display of the long-suffering, marriage-is-hell-believing, whipped-silly husband.
Never breaking Bosco's gaze, he said: "I'll defer to your wisdom, dearest. This time."
Iris grunted. "Well, however she says her name, it's a mystery to me how a woman like that could turn out to be a corrupt police officer. Such a pretty young thing. Such pretty eyes. And here they're saying she tried to murder Mr. Noble!"
"Speculation, dear, speculation," Tom muttered. "I don't believe I heard anyone say any such thing. I believe it was something to do with drugs. This Cruz person is probably a doper herself, and Mr. Noble was threatening to expose her. I hear a lot of these bad apples in the police are dopers."
"Nothing would surprise me, with the world being what it is today," Iris said. "But if she wanted to murder him, I can only ask why? Why would she take it into her head to do that?" Iris looked helplessly at Bosco. "Just because he wanted to make sure the police are honest? Do you really kill a man over that?"
Bosco only shrugged wearily, thinking of how grimly funny this really was. Neither Tom nor Iris had recognized his name, and while that should probably come as a relief, he found himself giddily tempted to tell them anyway. Bask proudly in his new celebrity. He thought of how easy it would be to satisfy their curiosity right now, right on this very spot; how easy it would be to just tell them who he really was and follow it up with the whole sorry tale, so when they watched the news tonight they wouldn't have to guess at what was truth and what was half-truth and what was a lie. They'd have one up on almost everybody else in New York. Maybe they'd like that.
Shit, maybe they'd even ask him for an autograph.
He was, for a few seconds at least, very tempted.
Instead he kept quiet, allowing himself to marvel at Iris's use of the phrase "pretty young thing." He thought of the picture of Cruz on the local news last night: sneering mouth, wild eyes, smears of blood like war paint on her cheeks and forehead ... and two shrouded corpses in the background just to make the whole incriminating picture complete. Trial by Media. Good evening, New York - say hello to Mad-Dog Cruz, frozen mid-snarl in glorious black-and-white. Devil-horn and little swastika cartoons optional.
Iris Hendrickson had obviously seen a different picture of Cruz. And it was obviously time to leave the Bridgeview. For real this time - turn one-eighty degrees and boogie on out of here. Any magic that had been in the air when he first came in was gone now, and the Bridgeview was becoming a stuffy, smelly, slightly claustrophobic place with a front desk that seemed to be manned by two bickering britcom rejects.
But there was still something bugging him. Something about Tom.
"Well," Bosco said, a bit too hastily. "It was ... uh ... it was good meeting you both, and it's nice of you to want to help, but I ... you know, I can't stick around."
"So long, then," Tom said amiably. "We'll tell Mr. Noble you were looking for him. Your name again ... it was Boss ... Bossca - ?"
"Boscorelli."
"Did you want to leave your number?" Iris said. "One of us could give you a ring when he gets back in. Or better yet we'll just have him call you."
Bosco shook his head. "Nah, forget it. I'll ... I'm sure I'll see him around."
"Maybe not as soon as you'd think," Tom said wryly. "If my dear wife is right about him finding someone to share a bedroll with. But if you ask me, I think he's in the doghouse at the moment. Ms. Zambrano really let him have it."
"It was very nice meeting you, Mr. Boscorelli," Iris said, giving him the star-studded smile for the last time. She paused, then added: "You know, I can't help but feel there's something familiar about that name. Are you sure you haven't dropped in to see Mr. Noble already?"
Bosco's throat tightened up. So Iris (and most likely Tom as well) had heard his name somewhere. She just hadn't made the connection yet.
He would rather she didn't until he was well clear of the hotel.
"No. No, I haven't," he said, starting across the lobby.
Iris shrugged. "Perhaps I heard him mention you at some point." She winked. "You take care of yourself now, Mr. Boscorelli."
Bosco nodded, already halfway to the door. In that moment he looked very much like Faith Yokas on the day she'd made her abortive attempt to go back to work - slinking along, trying not to look like he was in too much of a hurry. Trying not to look guilty.
And there was a vicious, petty little part of his mind (his Bosco-side) that kept insisting that pretty soon - any minute now, in fact - the truth would click home and one of them would challenge him. Tom perhaps, in that lower-class Cockney-sounding accent of his. Oy! Tom would shout (for that would be the cry of exclamation somebody like Tom would use). I recognize you now! You're one of those crooked cops! One of Mare-EET-za Cruz's gang!
Christ, why didn't he just tell them the truth about who he was in the first place? Why that cornball shit about being one of Noble's pals? He should have just had it out in the air and over with. My name's Maurice Boscorelli, I'm an ex-cop, and I want to ask Mr. Noble a few questions. You see, I almost got him killed the other day, and now a one-armed crazy woman might be gunning for him. Mad-Dog Mare-EET-za herself, in fact, armed and dangerous once again.
But Tom and Iris had already said their goodbyes and had dismissed him entirely; the two of them were now conversing with each other. They were talking about the "row" (pronounced British-style to rhyme with "wow") between Kim and Noble. Tom seemed to be teasing Iris about having missed the big showdown, while he had been treated to front-row seats. Iris, immersed in the big stack of papers she'd pulled out of the desk, was responding with a series of indifferent noises, absent little mmm-hmm's and ah's.
To Bosco, who had already reached the big doors that led into the foyer, the conversation was already growing dim and meaningless.
A reporter! his brain gibbered. Should've told them you were a reporter, here to interview Noble about his brush with Mad-Dog Cruz!
Bosco hit the doors with a grunt and pushed on through into the little foyer, glancing one last time at the photograph of the much younger Hendrickson couple. Tom grinning his liver-lipped grin, Iris with her arm thrown casually around his slouched shoulders. Beauty and the Beast. Sigourney Weaver and the Alien. The Odd Couple.
Christ, though, the woman really did look fine back then. Bosco allowed himself one last glance, because he was finished here and he'd probably never be back. He was finished here and he'd gotten what he wanted. He'd gotten more than what he'd wanted: he'd gotten a little perspective on his life. An escape from his troubles. A little breather. Iris and Tom and their hotel had nothing to do with anything going on with him - they were something entirely irrelevant to what was going on with him, and in the end that was what he'd been after. He'd wanted Something To Do, somebody to talk to who didn't know him or what he'd done or how he'd been branded.
And what could be more therapeutic than that? In your face, Brian O'Malley.
There was something still bothering him about Tom, though. Important or not, he'd never gotten to ask his question. Whatever it had been.
In the end, Bosco would find the answer for himself.
Everything that happened to Maurice Boscorelli after he left the Bridgeview Hotel might never have happened at all if the scratch had been on the passenger side of his car.
He'd keep coming back to that in the weeks ahead. Again and again, that would be what he'd keep thinking about on the many sleepless nights he had waiting for him, the sleepless nights when he would think back to how the day had started - Faith and Iris and Tom and the Bridgeview Hotel - and how he possibly could have gone from that to where he'd ended up, sitting in the back of an ambulance in front of a dilapidated house in a bad neighborhood on the other side of the city. With blood on his hands.
Was it going to Faith's first thing that morning? Was it going to the Bridgeview? Or was it the scratch on the door of his car?
Who knew?
Life could be funny sometimes.