Free The Hotel Detective by Alan Russell

mankind so different? No. He did care. He was sorry. But
     he still wasn’t quite ready to give himself up to the police. He started pacing, tired of it, then sat down on the sofa. On
     the coffee table was the Hotel’s guest information directory.
    At first thumbing, Carlton knew he had unveiled something better than the Home Shopping Network. He could get a massage in
     his own room or a mud bath in the spa. There was a tennis pro available for lessons (I always wanted to take up tennis, he
     thought) or an aerobics class. The Hotel had gift shops of all sorts. He could call for a book from the library (twenty-five
     thousand titles—so much for the Gideon Bible) or get a video. There was everything. The directory progressed from A to Z,
     with every letter receiving multiple pages of listings (except for Q, which only had two entries—quahogs, available daily
     in the seafood salad bar, and the Queen’s Tea, an English high tea served every afternoon in the Royal Room).
    It was the letter
T
that Carlton lingered over the longest. A score of tours were listed. The Hotel tour interested him the most. He was curious
     about this place, this temporary sanctuary. He wanted to know more about its history, wanted to walk its grounds. But he couldn’t,
     of course. He was just avoiding the inevitable, and besides, his clothes were an incriminating mess. Anyone who saw their
     condition might guess at his crime. Missing the tour, Carlton decided, was the metaphor for his life.
    Sighing, he started to close the directory when a boxed entry caught his eye. While the Hotel didn’t allow any advertising
     in the booklet, it did highlight some of its own services. He saw that on-property dry cleaning was available, and that for
     an extra fee, one-hour service was even offered.
    Dare I? thought Carlton. He wasn’t behaving as he knew he should. Sackcloth and ashes were the only appropriate garb for him
     now. Clothes couldn’t, or shouldn’t, hide his sin. Yet Carlton dialed the boldfaced extension.
    “Say,” he said, “I’ve made an awful mess of my suit. I had a bit too much to drink last night, and I suppose you can guess
     the rest.
    “What’s worse is that it’s the only suit I brought along, and I’ve got a meeting this morning….Could you?…You’re a lifesaver….How
     much?…That’s fine. Thank you very much.”
    For a price at which some retailers sold suits, the Hotel California promised to clean Carlton’s. The dry cleaner said they
     were good at spot cleaning and getting out even the most difficult stains. Carlton stuffed his soiled suit in a laundry bag
     provided by the Hotel, and less than five minutes later a bellman knocked on his door. The bellman gratefully accepted Carlton’s
     generous tip along with his bag and promised to return the suit within an hour.
    While waiting for his dry cleaning, Carlton studied the guest information directory a little more thoroughly. There was a
     men’s clothing shop in the Hotel. A crazy thought entered his head.
    Maybe I could use another suit.

XIII
    The turned-around pictures greeted Am on his return to his office. He wouldn't have minded turning around himself and going
     home. The incoming already had him ducking: the suicide, the perilous state of his employment, and the truffles. Well, not
     the truffles, at least not as much as Marcel's spitting. He wondered who had snitched on him to Kendrick. Useless to conjecture,
     he thought. Or was it? Wasn't he the Hotel detective?
    The hotel dick. It was a term half a century out of date, a description that brought to mind a smarmy sort, someone as likely
     to be looking through a keyhole as protecting a guest from someone doing the same. The title conjured up an image of contraband
     hooch, poker games, and smoke-filled rooms. The biography of a house dick would have to be a history gone bad and a position
     by default, not a post to which anyone would aspire. Hotel detectives were the sorts thrown off their