"Quite often. Usually for only an afternoon, if you know what I mean."
"I know. What floor is 1045-tenth or forty-fifth?"
"Tenth," Meskin said, "the same floor we've been having trouble with. Oh, my God," he croaked, his own words registering in their full impact.
The skinny guy came back. The amber screen broke apart like water that had been disturbed by an idly swirling stick. He took Marvin Meskin up by the scruff of his neck and on the way to the elevator collected the bellboy.
"Are we going to be killed too?" the bellboy asked as the elevator shot up to the tenth floor.
"Why?" the skinny guy asked while Meskin felt his stomach contents turn acidic.
"Because I'd like to call home and tell my mother goodbye," the bellboy said sincerely.
"Tell her good-bye over dinner tonight," the skinny guy growled. "I'm in a big rush."
Stepping out into the corridor, Meskin recalled that he had forgotten to bring along a passkey.
"No problem," the skinny guy said, releasing them on either side of Room 1045. "I brought my own."
"You? Where did you get . . . ?"
The question was answered before it was completed. The skinny guy answered it when he took hold of the knob, flexed one monster wrist, and handed the suddenly loose knob to Marvin Meskin.
It was very, very warm, Meskin found. He tossed it from hand to hand, blowing on his free hand by turns.
The door fell open after the man tapped it.
Marvin Meskin was shoved in first. The bellboy stumbled in, propelled by the skinny guy, who had such an irresistible way about him. They collided.
While they were picking themselves up, the skinny guy went for the bed, where the late Iraiti ambassador, Turqi Abaatira, AKA Abdul Al-Hazred, lay spread-eagled, his dark manhood dominating the decor like an overripe banana.
Ambassador Abaatira made a very colorful corpse. His body was a kind of brownish-white, his natural duskiness bleached by his lack of circulation. His tongue was a purplishblack extrusion in his blue face. His manhood was at full mast, a corpsy greenish-black.
The skinny guy looked over the body with a dispassionate eye, as if used to seeing corpses that were lashed to hotel beds by yards of yellow silk. He seemed most interested in the late ambassador's throat. The cords and muscles of his thick neck were squeezed by a long yellow silk scarf.
"Was he into bondage?" the skinny guy asked, turning from the body. His face was two degrees unhappier than before.
"We do not pry into our guests' affairs," Marvin Meskin sniffed, averting his eyes from the ugly but colorful sight. They kept going back to the swollen member in a kind of mesmerized horror. The bellboy was on his knees in front of the wastepaper basket. From the sounds he made, he was straining hard to throw up-but not hard enough. All he did was hack and spit.
When he at last gave up, the bellboy found himself being hauled to his feet by the tall skinny guy.
"Let's see those maids," he ordered.
The bellboy was only too happy to comply. On the way out of the room, the skinny guy paused to shove Marvin Meskin back.
"You," he said in a no-nonsense voice. "Mind the dead guy."
"Why me?" Meskin bleated.
"Because it's your hotel."
Which somehow made perfect sense to Marvin Meskin. Meekly he went into the bathroom and closed the door.
Remo Williams let the nervous bellboy lead him to the storage room.
"I found them in a corner, behind some stacked chairs," the bellboy was saying. "They . . . they were just like that dead guy."
"If they were, medical science is going to have a field day with them. Not to mention the National Enquirer, Hard Copy, Inside Edition, and Copra Inisfree."
"No, I didn't mean exactly like him," the bellboy protested, his face actually reddening with embarrassment. Looking at him in his tight-fitting hotel uniform, Remo decided he would be embarrassed too. "I meant they were killed the same way. Strangled," he added in a hushed voice as he unlocked the storage-room door.
The room was a dark forest of stacked chrome-and-leather chairs and great round folding tables. The bellboy led Remo to a dim corner.
"This was a smart place to hide them," the bellboy was saying. "All the damaged chairs and broken tables are stashed in this corner. Here."
He stepped aside for Remo to get a good look.
The maids were seated on the floor, their legs straight out, facing one another as if posed in a game of pat-a-cake. Their heads lolled drunkenly off the shoulders of their starched blue uniforms and their arms hung down off their drooping shoulders, elbows and wrists folded stiffly.
Their faces were almost-not quite-the same delicate blue as their starched uniforms. A few stared glassily at nothing.
Each maid was marked by a purplish bruise at the throat. Something had been tied around their necks very, very tightly. Tight enough to seemingly force their tongues from their open mouths. Tight enough to cause at least one of them to defecate into her underwear.
Remo went among them, kneeling at each body, making certain they were gone. They were. He stood up, his high-cheekboned face grim.
"What do you think, sir?" the bellboy asked, getting the idea that the skinny guy was not a dangerous maniac, but something much, much more.
"I don't like that yellow scarf upstairs," he muttered.
The cryptic comment called for no response, so the bellboy offered none. He stood there feeling angry and helpless and wondering if there was something he should have seen or done or heard that might have averted this tragedy.
Then it struck him.
"You know," he said slowly, "I saw a girl walking around the hotel yesterday who wore a scarf like the one we saw."
"Yellow scarves are pretty common," the man said, regarding the bodies dispassionately.
"She also wore a yellow dress. And yellow fingernail polish."
The skinny guy looked up suddenly.
"Did she look like a hooker?" he asked.
"I got that impression, yeah. More like a call girl, though. This is a classy place. The manager doesn't let streetwalkers in."
"If he lets the Iraiti ambassador frolic in the afternoons," the skinny guy said, walking off, "you shouldn't feel so damn proud of this fleabag."