In the closet, Willy could just about hear the cadence of a voice that made him ache to be back with Alvirah.
* * *
There were enough room-service calls to keep her busy from six until about ten. From her own observations and from the explanations of Hank, who grew increasingly garrulous as he began to appreciate her efficiency, Alvirah got to understand the setup. There were ten floors of rooms. The first six floors all had ten rooms and were reserved for the hourly guests. The upper-floor rooms were the largest, all with baths, and tended to be rented for at least a few days.
Over a plump hamburger that she cooked for him at ten o’clock, Hank told her that everybody registered under a false name. Everybody paid cash. “Like one guy who comes in to clean out his private mailboxes. He publishes dirty magazines. ‘Nother guy sets up card games. Lots of fellows come in here and get a bag on when they’re supposed to be on a business trip. That kind of stuff. Nothing bad. It’s sort of like a private club.”
Hank’s head began to droop after he’d finished the last of his third glass of beer. A few minutes later he was asleep. Quietly, Alvirah went to the table that served as a combination chopping board and desk. When she brought down the money after each order was delivered, she’d been instructed to put it in the cigar box that served as cash register. The order slip with the amount was placed in the box next to it. Hank had explained that, at midnight, room service ended and the desk clerk tallied up the money, compared it with the receipts, and put the cash in the safe, which was hidden in the bottom of the refrigerator. The order slips were then dropped into a cardboard box under the table. There was a massive jumble of them in place now.
Some would never be missed. Figuring that the top layers had to be the most recent records, Alvirah scooped up an armful and stuffed them in her voluminous handbag. She delivered three more orders to the bar between eleven and twelve. In between deliveries, unable to stand the grimy kitchen, she set about cleaning it up as a bemused Hank watched.
After a quick stop at the Port Authority to change into her good clothes, scrub the rouge and purple eye shadow from her face and wrap a turban around her flaming hair, Alvirah stepped out of a cab at quarter of one. Ramon, the night doorman, said, “Sister Cordelia was here. She asked a lot of questions about where you were.”
Cordelia was no dope, Alvirah thought with grudging admiration. A plan was forming in her mind, and Cordelia was part of it. Even before she sank her tired body into the Jacuzzi that was bubbling with Cypress Point Spa oils, Alvirah sorted out the greasy order slips. Within the hour she had narrowed the possibilities. Four rooms consistently sent for large orders. She pushed away the gnawing fear that they were all occupied by card players or some other kind of gamblers and that Willy might be in Alaska right now. Her instinct had told her the minute she set foot in the hotel that he was nearby.
It was nearly three when she got into the double bed. Tired as she was, it was impossible to get to sleep. Finally she pictured him there, settling in beside her. “Nighty-night, Willy, lovey,” she said aloud, and in her head heard him saying in response, “Sleep tight, honey.”
* * *
Sister Cordelia arrived at seven o’clock on Thursday morning. Alvirah was prepared for her. She’d been up half an hour and was wearing Willy’s plaid bathrobe, which had the faint scent of his shaving lotion. She had a pot of coffee on the stove.
“What’s up?” Cordelia asked abruptly.
Over coffee and Sara Lee crumb cake, Alvirah told her everything. “Cordelia,” she concluded, “I won’t tell you I’m not scared, because that would be a lie. I’m scared to death for Willy. If someone is watching this place or maybe has a delivery boy keeping an eye out, and it gets back that strange people were coming and going, they’ll kill Willy. Cordelia, I swear to you, I know he’s in that hotel, and I have a plan. Maeve still has her gun permit, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.” Sister Cordelia’s piercing gray eyes bored into Alvirah’s.
“And she’s still friends with the guys she sent to prison, isn’t she?”
“Oh sure. They all love her. You know they give Willy a hand fixing pipes whenever he needs it, and they take turns delivering meals to our shut-ins.”
“That’s what I need. They look like the people who hang out in that place. I want three or four of them to check into the Lincoln Arms tonight. Let them get a card game going. That happens all the time. Tomorrow night at seven o’clock, I get the call where to leave the money. They know that I won’t turn it over until I talk to Willy. To keep them from carrying him out of there, I want Maeve’s guys covering the exits. It’s our only chance.”
Cordelia stared grimly into space, then said, “Alvirah, Willy always told me to trust your sixth sense. I guess I’d better do it now.”
* * *
By Thursday afternoon, Clarence’s eyes were blinded with the crushing ache that was splitting his head from ear to ear. Even Tony was careful not to cross him. He didn’t reach to turn on the television set but contented himself sitting next to Willy and in a hoarse whisper telling him the story of his life. He’d gotten up to age seven, the year he’d discovered how easy it was to shoplift in the candy store, when Clarence barked from the bed, “You say you can fix that damn leak?”
Willy didn’t want to seem too excited, but the muscles in his throat squeezed together as he nodded vigorously.
“Whaddaya need?”
“A monkey wrench,” Willy croaked through the gag. “A screwdriver. Wire.”
“All right. Sammy, you heard him. Go out and get that stuff.”
Sammy was playing solitaire again. “I’ll send Tony.”
Clarence bolted up. “I said you. That dopey brother of yours’ll blab to the nearest guy where he’s going, why he’s going, who he’s getting it for. Now go.”
Sammy shivered at the tone, remembering how Tony had gone joyriding in the getaway car. “Sure, Clarence, sure,” he said soothingly. “And listen, long as I’m out, how about I bring in some Chinese food, huh? Could taste good for a change.”
Clarence’s scowl faded momentarily. “Yeah, okay. Get lotsa soy sauce.”
* * *
Alvirah dropped off the suitcase with her last bank pickup at twenty to four, barely time enough to rush to the Port Authority, change, and report to the job. As she trotted through the Lincoln Arms lobby she noticed a sweet-faced nun in traditional habit holding out a basket and quietly moving from one to the other occupants of the bar. Everybody threw something in. In the kitchen, Alvirah asked Hank about the nun.
“Oh her. Yeah. She spends it on the kids who live around here. Makes everybody feel good to toss her a buck or two. Kind of spiritual, you know what I mean?”
* * *
The chow mein was a welcome relief from hamburgers. After dinner, Clarence ordered Willy to go into the john and get rid of the dripping noise. Sammy accompanied him. Willy’s heart sank when Sammy said, “I don’t know how to fix nothing, but I know how not to fix it, so don’t get smart.”
So much for my big plan, Willy thought. Well, maybe I can stall it till I figure something out. He began by chipping at the years of accumulated rust around the base of the tank.
* * *
That night, orders were not as brisk as the night before. Alvirah suggested to Hank that she sort out all the old slips in the order box.
“Why?” Hank looked astonished. Why would anyone sort out useless slips?
Alvirah tugged at the sweatshirt she was wearing today. It said, I SPENT THE NIGHT WITH BURT REYNOLDS. Willy had bought it as a gag when they went to Reynolds’ theater in Florida. She tried to look mysterious. “You never know,” she whispered.
The answer seemed to satisfy Hank.
She hid the already sorted slips under the pile she dumped on the table. She knew what she was looking for. Consistent orders in quantity since Monday.
She narrowed it down to the same four rooms she’d selected from her earlier sorting.
At
six o’clock it suddenly got busy. By eightthirty she’d delivered food to three of the four suspect rooms. Two contained the ongoing card games. One was now a crap game. She had to admit that none of the players looked like kidnappers.
Room 802 did not phone for an order. Maybe the guy with the bad headache and his brother had checked out. At midnight a discouraged Alvirah was about the leave, when Hank grumbled, “Working with you is easy. The new day guy quit, and tomorrow they’re gonna bring in the kid who fills in. He screws up all the orders.”
Breathing a grateful prayer of thanks, Alvirah immediately volunteered to come in for the seven-to-one morning shift as well as her usual four to twelve. She reasoned that she could still rush to the banks that had promised to have the cash for her between twelve-fifteen and three.
“I’ll be back at seven,” she promised Hank.
“So will I,” he complained. “The day cook quit too.”
On the way out, Alvirah noticed some familiar faces hanging around the bar. Louie, who’d served seven years for bank robbery and had a black belt in karate; Al, who’d been a strongman for a pawnbroker and served four years for assault; Lefty, whose specialty was hot cars. She smiled inwardly. Maeve was coming through for her—these were her men.
True to their training, even though Alvirah was sure they’d seen her, neither Louie, Al, nor Lefty gave any sign of knowing her.
* * *
Willy had reduced the dripping to its original annoying level, then an irritable Clarence had shouted in for him to knock off the hammering. “Leave it where it is. I can put up with that much noise for another twenty-four hours.”
And then what? Willy wondered. There was one hope. Sammy was bored with observing him fiddling around with the water tank. Tomorrow Sammy would be more careless. That night Willy insured the further need of his services by again hopping over to the water tank and adjusting the drip-drip level.
* * *
In the morning, Clarence’s eyes were feverish. Tony started talking about an old girlfriend he planned to look up when they got to the hideout in Queens, and no one told him to keep his mouth shut. Meaning, Willy thought, they’re not worried about me hearing them.
When breakfast was delivered, Willy, securely stashed in the closet, jumped so suddenly that the gun in Sammy’s hand almost went off. This time he didn’t hear just a cadence of a voice that reminded him of Alvirah. It was clearly her ringing tone asking Tony if his brother’s headache was any better.
A startled Sammy hissed in Willy’s ear, “You crazy or somethin’?”
Alvirah was looking for him. Willy had to help her. He had to get back into the bathroom, work on the water tank, tap the wrench to the cadence of “And the Band Played On,” their song, the one the band was playing when he first asked Alvirah to dance at the K of C hall over forty years ago.
He got his chance four hours later when, at Clarence’s furious command, wrench and screwdriver in hand and a jittery Sammy beside him, he resumed his task of jointly fixing and sabotaging the water tank.
He was careful not to overdo. He reasonably told a protesting Sammy that he wasn’t making that much noise, and anyhow, this place would probably love to have one decent john. Scratching his fourday growth of beard, squirming in his wrinkled clothing, Willy began to send off signals three minutes apart. “Ca-sey would WALTZ with the STRAW-ber-ry BLONDE tap-tap TApppp TApppp TApppp.”
Alvirah was delivering pizza to 702 when she heard it. The tapping. Oh God, she prayed, oh God. She placed the tray on the uneven tabletop. The occupant of the room, a nice-looking fellow in his thirties, was coming off a binge. He pointed up, “Wouldn’t that kill you? They’re renovating or something. Take your pick. Sounds like Niagara Falls or New Year’s Eve up there.”
It has to be 802, Alvirah decided, thinking of the guy on the bed, the doorkeeper, the open bathroom door. They must shove Willy in the closet when they order room service. Even though she was so excited her heart was thumping through the sweatshirt that read DON’T BE A LITTERBUG, she took time to caution the drinker that booze would be his ruination.
* * *
There was a phone in the hallway by the bar. Hoping she wasn’t being observed by the desk clerk, Alvirah made a hurried call to Cordelia. She finished by saying, “They’ll be phoning me at seven o’clock.”
At quarter of seven that night, the occupants of the bar of the Lincoln Arms Hotel were awed at the sight of six mostly elderly nuns, in traditional floorlength habit, veil, and wimple, entering the lobby. The desk clerk jumped up and made a shooing motion toward the revolving door behind them. Alvirah watched, tray in arms, as Maeve, the appointed spokesperson, stared down the desk clerk.
“We have the owner’s permission to ask for donations on every floor,” Maeve told him.
“You got no such thing.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We have Mr. _______’s permission.”
The clerk’s face paled. “You guys shut up and get out your loot,” he yelled at the occupants of the bar. “These here sisters are gonna pass the hat.”
“No, we’re starting upstairs,” Maeve told him.
Alvirah protectively brought up the rear as the bevy of nuns, led by Cordelia, entered the elevator.
They went directly to the eighth floor and clustered in the hallway where Lefty, Al and Louie were waiting. At exactly seven o’clock Alvirah knocked on the door. “Room service,” she called.
“We didn’t order nothin’,” a voice snarled.
“Someone did, and I’ve got to collect,” she shouted firmly.
She heard scuffling. A door slammed. The closet. They were hiding Willy. The door opened a crack. A nervous Tony instructed, “Leave the tray outside. How much?”
Alvirah kept her foot firmly in the door as the oldest nuns materialized behind her. “We’re collecting for the Lord,” one of them whispered.
Clarence had the phone in his hand. “What the hell’s going on out there?” he shouted.
“Hey, that’s no way to talk to the sisters,” Tony protested. Reverently he stepped aside as they drifted past him into the room.
Sister Maeve brought up the rear, her hands folded in the sleeves of her habit. In an instant, she circled behind Clarence, yanked her right hand out and held a gun against his temple. In the crisp tone that had made her a superb cop, she whispered, “Freeze, or you’re dead.”
Tony opened his mouth to yell a warning, but it was obliterated as Lefty karated him into unconsciousness. Lefty then insured Clarence’s silence with a judicious rap on the neck that made him collapse beside Tony on the floor.
Louie and Al herded the reluctant Sister Cordelia and her elderly flock into the safety of the hallway. It was time to rescue Willy. Lefty had his hand ready to strike. Sister Maeve had her gun pointed. Alvirah threw open the closet door as she bellowed, “Room service.”
Sammy was standing next to Willy, his gun in Willy’s neck. “Outside, all of you,” he snarled. “Drop that gun, lady.”
Maeve hesitated for a moment, then obeyed.
“Outside!” Sammy barked.
He’s trapped and he’s desperate, Alvirah thought frantically. He’s going to kill my Willy. She forced herself to sound calm. “I’ve got a car in front of the hotel,” she told him. “There’s two million dollars in it. Take Willy and me with you. You can check the money, drive away and then let us out somewhere.” She turned to Lefty and Maeve, “Don’t try to stop us or he’ll hurt Willy. Get lost all of you.” She held her breath and stared at Willy’s captor, willing herself to seem confident as the others left the room.
Sammy hesitated for an instant. Alvirah watched as he turned the gun to point toward the door. “It better be there, lady,” he snapped. “Untie his feet.”
Obediently she knelt down and yanked at the knots in the ropes binding Willy’s ankles. She peeked up as she undid the last one. The gun was still pointed at the door. Alvirah remembered how she used to put her shoulder under Mrs. O’Keefe’s piano
and hoist it up to straighten out the carpet. One, two, three. She shot up like an arrow, her shoulder whamming into Sammy’s gun hand. He pulled the trigger as he dropped the gun. The bullet released flaking paint from the drooping ceiling.
Willy threw his manacled hands around Sammy, bear-hugging him until the others rushed back into the room.
As though in a dream, Alvirah watched Lefty, Al and Louie free Willy from his handcuffs and ropes and use them to secure the abductors. She heard Maeve dial 911 and say, “This is Officer Maeve O’Reilly, I mean Sister Maeve Marie, reporting a kidnapping, attempted murder and successful apprehension of the perpetrators.”
Alvirah felt Willy’s arms around her. “Hi, honey,” he whispered.
She was so filled with joy she couldn’t speak. They gazed at each other. She took in his bloodshot eyes, stubble of beard and matted hair. He studied her garish makeup and DON’T BE A LITTERBUG sweatshirt. “Honey, you’re gorgeous,” Willy said fervently. “I’m sorry if I look like one of the Smith Brothers.”
Alvirah rubbed her face against his. The tears of relief that were welling in her throat vanished as she began to laugh. “Oh, sweetie,” she cried, “you’ll always look like Tip O’Neill to me.”
A Clean Sweep
The phone rang, but Alvirah ignored it. She and Willy had only been home long enough to unpack, and already the answering machine had picked up six messages. They’d agreed that tomorrow would be time enough to catch up with the outside world.
It’s nice to be home, she thought happily as she stepped out onto the terrace of their Central Park South apartment and looked down at the park, where now in late October the leaves had turned into a blazing rainbow of orange and crimson and yellow and russet.