The bed was comfortable enough, though it had more pillows than anyone could use and the light switch for the lamp on the bedside table wasn’t where it should have been. I thought of looking over the agreement before falling asleep, just to be sure no one had altered it, but decided that would be useless. Everything I’d seen so far that night made clear that it didn’t matter what had been agreed to four, no, five years before. I wandered around the room and looked at the furniture. It was mostly compressed wood-agreeable enough on the outside but nothing really to it. That was getting to be the theme of the day: unreality. I froze. Something was missing-my wood chips. They weren’t on the desk. The desk drawer had a room service menu, a piece of stationery, and a flight schedule. Odd, I thought, and opened the top drawer of the bureau. There were two new shirts in it, both of them my size. The wood chips had been put in a neat pile to one side.
“Well, what do you know about that?” I said, and lay down. The next thing I knew, the phone woke me.
“Good morning, Inspector. This is your wake-up call.”
“Did I ask for one?”
“Someone must have. It’s early. Take a shower and have some coffee, you’ll feel fine.”
“Tea. I don’t want coffee. I want tea.”
“Breakfast is on the second floor. They have plenty of tea. It doesn’t start for two hours, though.”
“You mean it’s only four thirty?” I gave up looking for the light switch and went to take a shower. This was low-level harassment, and I knew there would be more where that came from. Nothing too rough, but enough to make clear who was in the lead and who was supposed to trot behind. Trot behind for what, I still didn’t know. I’d left the restaurant before finding out what the “small problem” was. Just as I stepped under the water, the phone rang again. Nice, I thought. I got out and picked up the phone. “Go to hell.”
“Good morning to you, too, Inspector.”
“What do you want, Major?” I put a towel over the TV screen.
“Simply wondering if you slept well.”
I slammed the phone down.
Twenty minutes later it rang again. “Is this a better time? I thought we could have breakfast together in my office.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“The driver is waiting out front. See you soon.”