22. Mikey Gets A Scoop.

Oct 22, 2020

To read the story so far, visit the Table of Contents.

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Room 699

From a booth in the bath of The Anchor, Mikey Jervis checked his watch, then stared again at the bar’s phone in the corner, trying to mentally will it to ring. When it didn’t, he returned to his scotch and the conversation at hand.

“Thing with Bobby was that even when he was in full-blown politician mode, there was always that glint in his eye telling you he was in on it too,” Gary said with the confidence that comes with years lived. “He knew the whole dance between us guys and him, and knew it was nothing but a show.”

It was Gary’s last day at The Chronicle after two decades of coming home late every night with ink under his fingernails. He and his wife Sam had already made plans to trade in their two-story home across the river for an RV to see what else the country had to offer. It sounded like a dream to everyone but Mikey, to whom the plan sounded like death.

Mikey looked again at the phone booth. Silent.

“Hot date, Mikey?” asked Todd, a copywriter a few years his senior.

“Something like that,” Mikey said. “Meeting a source later.”

“I thought this wasn’t a work night,” Todd said.

“C’mon, Todd,” Gary droned. “They’re all work nights for Scoops Jervis over here. I once had that drive myself.”

Gary lifted his glass. They all clinked and drank. He called Barbara, the young bartender, over for refills. As she headed back to the bar, the phone loudly clanged and echoed through the dimly lit space. Mikey bolted from the booth and picked it up the phone on the second ring.

“Lukas Lane is dead,” said a voice, frantic and quivering on the other end of the line.

It was Ginger.

“They killed him,” she said. “They called it a suicide.”

“Slow down,” Mikey said, pressing his notebook against the booth’s glass. “Are we meeting or is this over the phone?”

“Room 378,” Ginger said.

Click.

In the booth, Mikey got to work. Over the years, they’d established a code for their meet-ups, a little safeguard in case anyone else was listening. A simple substitution code that, when he was done marking up the numbers, revealed that she was in Room 699.

He went back to the table, grabbed his bag, and downed his scotch.

“Knowing you drunks, I can’t imagine I’ll be up there longer than you’ll be down here,” Mikey said, his thin mustache lifting on either side with his smirk.

“We’ll be here, unless your source ends up getting other ideas,” Gary said with a wink, then turning back to the party. “Which reminds me of another story...”

“You’re gonna have to save that one for when I come back,” Mikey said.

He gave Gary a loving squeeze on his shoulder, just in case this was indeed goodbye, and walked through the wooden door into the Palmer’s lobby. Behind the desk was Stroud, fucking Stroud, waving him over.

“Can we help you, Mr. Jervis?” Stroud droned. “Don’t see your name on our list of scheduled guests.”

“Meeting a friend upstairs,” Mikey said.

“Of course,” Stroud said, and pulled out a pen. “Just need to sign you in. Room number and name of the guest, if you will.”

“You kidding?”

“Can’t be too careful these days,” Stroud said. “Crime running rampant in our fair city and all. Not like it used to be.”

“Oh, I just remembered I left something in the car,” Mikey said. “Be right back.”

Mikey exited through the front revolving door into the night and sped around the corner to the hotel’s side door. He pried it open with a pen, walked back in, and hustled into the nearby stairwell.

It was a little game they played. Stroud knew he couldn’t do anything to keep Mikey out for long, what with him moored behind the desk, but at least Stroud could at least make the scoop hound take the stairs. Around the third floor, Mikey got winded and leaned against the wall.

Lukas Lane. Dead. They said it was a suicide.

Mikey had seen Lane now and then. He was a detective from across the river who cut a large, blocky profile. Worked internal affairs stuff for the city, like some outside consultant brought in for an extra set of uncompromised eyes. He’d be, what, the fifth or sixth cop suicide over the past few months? That was a story.

Mikey opened the door into the sixth-floor hallway and rapped his 1-2-1 coded knock on Room 699. The handle spun, Ginger let him in.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ginger said, cigarette shaking in her mouth with such rapidity that a dusting of ash floated down onto the green carpet.

The door shut behind him, and she walked back to the window ledge to blow another strand of smoke.

“Fuck,” she said again.

Ginger had always been unrattled in their meetings together. She’d calmly and succinctly break down who was in bed with whom, lobbing Mikey tips on which power players were worth snooping into, and for what. Tipsters like Ginger had the kind of value you couldn’t buy, and Mikey knew better than to try. All he could offer was a fair shake and tip her off whenever he heard of an upcoming vice raid.

“It’s all bigger than you think,” she said. “Way bigger.”

She stubbed out her cigarette. Lit another.

“I’d seen Lukas a few times,” she said. “Nice guy, real gent. Last I heard he was working on a case. Big one. Internal stuff. Cops gone rogue in the department, 14th Precinct mostly. Had a code name for it. Sunset.”

She crossed the room.

“Last we chatted he said something always bothered him about an old cop suicide,” she said. “Someone named Harrison. Ring any bells?”

Mikey shook his head.

“Lane wouldn’t off himself,” she said, mostly to herself. “He wasn’t the type. I know the type, and he wasn’t.”

The phone rang and they both jumped. She looked at it skeptically for a few rings then picked up.

“Hello,” she said, and Mikey saw her face blanch white. “Oh, hi. Okay, see you soon love.”

She hung up and turned to Mikey.

“You have to go. Now.”

“What’s up?”

“Captain Volley,” she said.

“Volley?”

“On his way up,” she said. “How would he fucking know where I was?”

Mikey hoisted his bag over his shoulder. Ginger pulled open the door just as the elevator dinged from further down the corridor.

“Fuck,” she said, and signaled Mikey to halt.

She stepped into the hallway and turned to the elevators. As soon as he heard the doors whoosh open, Mikey saw Ginger’s entire countenance shift at once—from rigidity to looseness with a shift in her hips, a single leg thrust out. She called out.

“Thought I heard you coming, honey,” she said down the hall. “Came pretty quick.”

“Don’t hear that too often,” said a deep voice approaching.

She waved a hand back to Mikey, as if trying to will him from existence. He circled the room.

Beyond the open window was the fire escape, and also whatever peering eyes lurked in the building across the way. To his right, the bathroom. No go. To his left, a dark closet. He slunk inside.

Ginger had hung up a variety of dresses, probably 20 in all. It seemed like she’d been staying at the hotel for a week or more. He parted them, ducked inside, and closed them in front of him just as the girthy Captain Volley entered to kiss Ginger on the cheek.

“Good to see you, dear,” he whispered.

Mikey was close enough to hear his guttural tone crystal clear. Through the cracked door, Mikey spied Volley’s expansive gut, the revolver that hung against its side. He carried an open bottle of cheap red wine in his fist.

“Hope you don’t mind I already started on my way up,” he said.

He took a swig straight from the bottle and handed it over. Ginger took one herself and Volley set it on the desk.

“Thanks for the gift, honey,” Ginger said.

She had a new giddy affect to her voice, entirely different from a minute ago. She led Volley by the hand to the bed, out of Mikey’s slivered field of view.

Mikey became conscious of his breath, of how quickly his pulse was thumping through his temples. His focus on that rhythmic beat was drowned out by the bed frame rocking against the wall as Ginger did her paying gig. This went on for another few minutes, with Ginger’s soft voice occasionally offering quiet encouragement, before Volley’s wet and rasping final groan.

The police captain caught his breath with a wheeze, and Mikey heard the flick of a lighter.

“So, Captain,” Mikey heard Ginger say. “To what do I owe the great, great pleasure of this visit.”

A loud shift of weight in the bed, then Volley’s loud footfalls as he crossed the room.

“You were just on my mind is all,” he said.

Volley passed by the crack in the closet door as he stumbled into the bathroom. Mikey heard his massive feet plop on the tile before dribbling out a staccato flow into the toilet water. When it dissipated, Volley hacked up a loud, harsh cough and dropped a loogie in the bowl to follow down the flush.

Volley crossed again by the closet slit, naked and full of folds, and opened the desk drawer. Inside were two highball glasses. He set them on the desk, his round, fleshy body obscuring Mikey’s sightline as he filled them to the brim with wine. He walked back to the bed.

“Let me ask you something,” Ginger said. “I heard that Lukas Lane died.”

“That’s true,” Volley said. “Suicide.”

“I liked him,” Ginger said. “Helped me out of a jam once.”

“He was that kinda guy.”

“Do you buy it?” Ginger said, sipping her wine. “That he offed himself?”

“That’s a big question,” Volley said. “You know, when these things happen, it sends us into all sorts of questions. We see guys when they’re logging hours in the office or out in the streets, but only get glimpses of what’s actually going on at home. Who’s to say what’s going on behind those doors.”

Mikey reached into his bag and felt for his tape recorder. He pulled it out, clicked a button, and saw the red recording light flash on.

“All we know is that his blood alcohol tested through the roof and he had rocks in his pockets,” Volley said.

“That could be someone trying to off him for—”

“Drink your wine and let me finish, dear,” Volley said. “Back at home there was a letter left to his wife, Adele, and his son, Johnny. Nothing else in the way of concrete explanations. Personal stuff.”

Mikey extended an arm through the hanging dresses to aim the recorder.

“Am I safe?” Ginger said.

Volley let out a belly laugh that echoed through the room, and Mikey watched the needle on his recorder spastically tilt back and forth.

“You got nothing to worry about now, love?” Volley asked.

A long silence. Then a damp, muffled sound that could only be the two of them starting round two. “They like to have their cake and eat it twice,” Ginger had once explained to Mikey.

But then Mikey realized that the sound was all off. It was squishier, more frantic.

Then he noticed that the bed frame struck the wall without any sort of rhythm, sharper and louder than before. A little while later, he heard a pants zipper and the metal click of a belt buckle as Volley’s wide figure flashed past the closet door. The cop opened the room’s door and exited into the hallway.

Mikey parted the dresses and stepped from his hiding spot, but as he did, the room door burst back open.

Mikey was exposed.

All Volley would have to do is take a quick peek to his right. If the rumors were true, he’d end Mikey’s time in this world with a quick gunshot to the dome. He’d probably mark the case as a peeping tom caught in the wrong place.

“Forgot something, love,” Volley said, then mumbled, “Don’t know why I’m telling you.”

He walked to the bed and retrieved the two wine glasses, and took them into the bathroom. Mikey watched as he gave them both a hearty scrub, and took the one with lipstick still around its rim. He put it into his bag, grabbed the wine bottle from the desk and walked back out the door. Mikey waited until the captain’s loud footsteps faded down the hall, then he slowly left the closet to peer toward the bed.

Ginger was gone.

He stepped deeper into the room and noticed one of Ginger’s shoes bent at an awkward angle on the bed’s far side.

There was a foot still inside.

Mikey gave a wide berth as he walked around to the narrow space between bed and wall. There was Ginger. Motionless. Her face smashed against the wall so it looked like she was melting.

Mikey gave her body a closer look. Her face was a bluish red, and there were claw marks across her throat. He played a hunch and, yep, her fingernails were filled with her own flesh and blood from attempting to excavate whatever poison Volley had given her.

Mikey sat on the bed and considered the angles. There was no question Volley would make sure the report over this death would cross his desk. And if there was a note in there concerning how one Michael “Scoop” Jervis was the person who discovered the body? Well, that’d be too much heat for this intrepid reporter. No real choice but to scram and let the maid find her.

He searched the room for any trace he’d left behind. He looked under the bed, and glanced at the desk, and even opened the nightstand, knowing full well that he never used it. Inside, there was only a Gideon Bible.

But before he closed the drawer, he felt a hand grasp around his wrist. It held it in place, and Mikey saw long red tendrils like fingers appear across his arm. The curtains blew open and he heard a voice whisper and shriek at once.

“Sunset,” it hissed.

Mikey stepped back or was flung against the wall, he wasn’t quite sure, and the wind from outside calmed. He stood back up and held a stillness as he looked one more time at Ginger.

His source, his friend in a way. Her face was pressed against the bed, and held a static look of anguish and fear.

Mikey picked up his bag, the tape recorder’s record light still shining red inside. He made the sign of the cross, even though he hadn’t believed in years, and left the hotel down the stairwell.

To be continued...

Artwork by Tiffany Silver Braun.