My Salad Days

       I don’t like to tell this story. When I can, I avoid the subject
completely, but, well, with the infamy that the incident has managed to
attain, it’s a hard subject to steer clear of. At dinner parties and such,
everybody seems to want to hear it. Sometimes I can get away with saying
that it was too long ago, that the details have become hazy in my mind. But
nothing could be farther from the truth.

       It was a long time ago --the summer of my twenty-first year. I was a cocky
college student then, and my summers were spent jobless, drifting from one
acquaintance’s home to the next, and reveling in my own freeloaderdom. I
often bragged of my ability to survive for a week on a mere twenty-dollar
bill.
       That weekend, however, I was luxuriating in an expensive hotel room on my
father’s dime. A large group of his business associates were in town, and
the man was eager to show off his daughter. I managed to convince him to pay
for my fancy lodgings by making the the point that I would be better shown
off were I not “virtually homeless,” as I so pathetically put it.
       The accommodations were rich. Oil paintings adorned the walls, and a grand
window of at least one and a half times my height looked out upon a
well-manicured golf course. The carpet was so soft that I found myself
spending almost my entire stay there barefoot, wriggling my toes among the
smooth fibers.
       I managed to avoid, for the most part, spending any time with my father and
his business associates, and instead lounged about the hotel grounds and
ordered dishes with unpronounceable names from room service. The snacks all
came with decorative toothpicks in festive colors, and the entrees were
accompanied by razor-sharp steak knives and delicate forks of the finest
silver. Every meal was like a high-society dinner party, and I was not just
the guest of honor, but the only guest.

       I found myself lounging in the well-cushioned corner sofa by my tremendous
window on the third evening of my stay, alone but for the remnants of a
buttery French dish that I had only just consumed. I had attempted to
challenge the man from room service to a duel with the little razor-sharp
steak-knives that were provided with every meal, but he had remained
unamused. (“How else will I work out my violent tendencies?” I had cajoled
to no avail.)
       Bored and alone, I could only occupy myself by gazing out at the golf
course for so long. I curled my toes into the lush depths of the carpet, and
heaved myself to my feet. To kill time, I paced back and forth across the
main room of my suite, contemplating the activities available to me and
enjoying the feel of the rug between my toes.
       Suddenly, my foot came into contact with, instead of the downy texture of
the carpet that I was appreciating so much, a patch of sticky, wet rug.
Surprised, I shrieked and recoiled, and looked at the dark stain upon the
floor. A smell that was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time reached my
nostrils.
       It occurred to me that the dark, sticky stain could be a patch of spilled
blood, but the concept of murder seemed so distant and unconnected to my
cushioned and nonchalant lifestyle. I hardly believed for a second that such
a thing could take place in my own hotel room. I noticed a second dark patch
on my beloved rug, and a third, and I followed the puddled trail to the
double doors of the hotel room’s closet, which I opened to find --

--Suddenly, murder ceased to be a distant concept, and I was right in the
middle of a scene from a TV crime drama. Before me, the corpse’s mouth hung
open like a haunted house ghoul’s, and below it gaped a second grin. Blood
dripped down from it, and soaked the front of the cadaver’s fancy dress
shirt.
       It seems like the logical thing for me to have done then would have been to
scream, but instead I just gasped a little, and closed the closet doors. But
closing the closet made me doubt what I had seen, and I was compelled to
open it again. After taking another look at the blood-drenched corpse, as if
to verify what I had seen, I picked up the phone and requested that someone
come up to my room. “There’s something in my closet,” I said. I knew that I
should have been telling them more than that, but I couldn’t think how I
would phrase it. The man they sent, the same man who had brought me my
unpronounceable French food, received a rather nasty shock.

       From that point on, everything became frenzied. 911 was called, and cops
arrived with lights and sirens blaring. I must have given the police my
statement at least fifteen times, that night. Not a one seemed to believe me
when I told them that I had no idea how the body had found its way into my
closet.
       The facts were thus: The body, found at 8:17 PM on the second Sunday of
March, appeared to have been killed a mere 25 minutes earlier. The marks
upon the throat matched those that would be made by the razor-sharp steak
knives that the hotel so readily supplied to any guest who might request
room service. When the room was dusted for fingerprints, my own and those of
hotel employees were the only ones found; two maids had been in the room
previously that day, and the man from room service had left prints on the
door and in the location where he had set down the tray. Any other
fingerprints were too smudged to identify.
       The dead man’s name was Vincent Russel, and he had been an employee at the
hotel, working room service in the suites on the second floor of the east
wing, a set of rooms many long hallways and two flights of stairs away from
my own. He had had a wife and a four year old son at home, and had only been
working at the hotel for three months; his criminal record was clean, and
his job evaluations were always positive. The man’s coworkers described him
as a bit of a loner, but generally harmless, and difficult to anger. No one
seemed to know of any enemies he might have had. Some of the people
interviewed by the police doubted that he was even capable of making
enemies. No one seemed to have a motive.
       My father, ever supportive, took the liberty to use what influence he had
gained, through money and connections, to keep me informed of every detail
that the police discovered. The facts were stacking up against me. Given the
location of the body, and the lack of any other suspects, it was starting to
look like it would be me that they would prosecute. I had to find some way
to prove that I was innocent.
       My father hired a fancy lawyer, but the man presumed me to be guilty, and
defended me only with fancy words and legal nuances. He strutted around in a
designer suit, and carried a pristine briefcase, and there was no way that
he would be willing to get his hands dirty. I decided to do a little
investigative work on my own.
       When the victim’s autopsy report was completed, I was notified almost as
quickly as the police were. The cause of death was determined to have been
loss of blood (which had already been quite clear), and there were no signs
of struggle. The only oddity found was a small silver key, lodged in the
lower bit of the man’s esophagus.
       This piece of evidence must have sent the police detectives into a flurry
of confusion, but when I saw the photograph of the key, I recognized it
almost immediately. Though law enforcement had ransacked my hotel room, and
three of my previous temporary residences, the hotel room in which my father
was staying had remained unscathed (though I know not whether this was
through and oversight on their part or influence exerted on his). Had,
however, they peered into his quarters, the cops would have seen a
heavy-looking safe, perhaps five cubic feet in volume, with a lock of a
similar size and in the same bright silver as the key. This safe held many
of my father’s important papers.
       The question remained, of course, how the deceased had gotten a hold of the
silver key, or even knew of it’s existence; the man had not even been
assigned to a set of rooms near my father’s, much less my father’s itself.
My father had indicated to the hotel management that only specific employees
were to be permitted in his room, and those only when he was present. I
could think of no way in which Vincent Russel or any of his coworkers could
have had access to the key or the safe.
       This left only  five people, other than my father and myself, who knew of
the key or its importance: my father’s business associates, Messrs.
Strickland, Rowe, Hampton, Ortega, and Nichols.
       Strickland was an imposing man, muscular, and tall enough that few could
see the top of his hairless head, wearing always a stiff suit and rarely
affording anyone a smile. But I had known him since I could display my age
with a single hand, and as a child had awoken a softness in him that few
others ever got the chance to see. He sent me Christmas presents every year,
and once made soup for me when I was sick; I would have trusted him with my
life.
       Rowe was a bit of a wild card. He wore business suits when in meetings with
my father, but seemed like the sort of man who spent most of his days in
Hawaiian shirts, sipping piña coladas and trying to screw the company out of
as much money as possible. He was not a favorite of my father’s, and rumors
had been circulating lately that he might be encountering a significant
demotion.
       The remaining three I knew very little of. None of them had been working
with my father for very long, and I had taken in the recent past to avoiding
involvement in my father’s business dealings, preferring to assert my
independence through a manner of living entirely different from that with
which I was raised. While my father held hushed meetings with these men, I
had been hanging out with friends, doing things we’d later determine to have
been “actually kindof stupid,” and getting more than a little tipsy.
       I had, however, been introduced to the three upon my arrival at the hotel,
and could pair with each name an appearance and a vague general impression.
Hampton was a redhead, and seemed to be swimming in even the slimmest of
suits. Ortega was very slightly overweight, and seemed somewhat embarrassed
about it. And Nichols was small and mousey, five foot six at the tallest,
and seemed to cower behind Ortega even when the two men were standing side
by side.
       My investigation of the men, save Strickland who I knew would never kill
anyone, began with a glance at their phone records, which I requested by
mentioning my father’s name at the front desk. The hotel was all too happy
to oblige.
       Despite my suspicions, none of the phone records held anything out of the
ordinary. A few calls to my father’s room each, a few calls for room
service, and a few calls to numbers that I felt I could safely assume were
wives, based on the times at which they had been called. Nothing popped out
at me.
       Growing perplexed and desperate, I begged the hotel manager to allow me to
see the security tapes from the three days immediately preceding the murder.
Eventually, she caved. There were no security cameras inside of guests’
rooms, so I had to content myself to sift through hours and hours of people
ambling along in the hallways. Sudden;y --there! --I found a piece of the
evidence that I needed. Though the angle was awkward and the picture quality
far from perfect, I could see quite clearly the significant event of the
night preceding the murder.
       Walking down the hall, on the screen before me, was my father, not far from
his hotel room. Beside him was the mousy Mr. Nichols, lost without anyone to
hide behind. He almost seemed to be shivering. And walking towards him the
opposite direction was the now-deceased Vincent Russel. As the two
trajectories met, I could see Vincent Russel bumping very slightly into my
father on his left side, near the pocket where he kept his safe key, before
hastily apologizing and moving on. I rewound those few seconds on the tape
and watched it again. Again, again, and again, until I could be almost sure
that the tiny, nuanced movement was real. Nichols, mousy little Nichols, had
very subtly nodded at Vincent Russel as he had approached.
       And then it occurred to me --Nichols had been staying in a room near the
pool, quite a distance from mine or my father’s room. In fact, he had been
in the area tended to by the late Mr. Russel. The calls that Nichols had
made to room service, which I had so quickly assumed to be insignificant,
had resulted in Vincent Russel’s arrival at his door, and that must have led
to plotting. Nichols had tipped Russel off to the safe key for the important
documents, many of which could easily have been used for blackmail, and
Russel had done the dirty work.
       I could piece together the events of the night of the murder in my head.
Nichols, knowing that he’d have a better chance at entering my father’s
hotel room to steal the documents, had wanted Russel to give up the key
--but Russel probably hadn’t been willing to part with it without payment.
Russel had tried to swallow the key to secure it from Nichols, and Nichols
had slit his throat. Russel would have had a key card capable of opening all
the doors in the hotel, and Nichols would have been able to use it to stash
the body in my suite while I was distracted with gourmet food and daydreams
and looking out over the golf course.
       Of course I called the police then, and the rest of it was on the evening
news. In Nichols’ room was found the remains of a gourmet steak meal sans
extra-pointy knife, a pair of gloves with trace amounts of blood (Russel’s),
and Vincent Russel’s special room service key card. Getting a conviction
must’ve been easy as pie. And I, of course, was let off the hook.

       And that is my story. Can’t you see how I hate telling it so? It’s so long
and complicated. I had to work forever on memorizing it. I wonder what would
happen if I told them the truth --the folks at dinner parties. I can just
imagine their jaws dropping. Daddy would be furious, of course. And I would
be off to jail pretty quickly. They might even let old Nichols out, though I
hear he’s pretty infirm by now, if you know what I mean. Oh, assassination
is such a thankless job. But I simply won’t allow people to try to take
Daddy’s money like that.
       You should see what I did with Rowe.