Free An Echo of Death by Mark Richard Zubro

It was locked.
    I ran up to the counter of the reception desk and banged the little bell. It gave off a tiny ching. The humming stopped. A perfectly immense woman emerged from behind a six-foot switchboard.
    She eyed us carefully. “You look like hell,” she stated. She leaned her bulk against the counter from the other side. She could easily have wrapped us both in her fond embrace and had room for one more. Her gray hair was pulled straight back, but left to dangle in wisps of curls at her neck. The color of her eyes was lost behind thick glasses, through which she inspected both of us in turn.
    â€œI’m Edna,” she said. “I own the hotel. You boys look like you need some help.”
    I didn’t want to make long explanations, nor take her into our confidence. “We need a room,” I said.
    â€œSure,” she said.
    Fumbling with forms and keys took several minutes. I must have glanced anxiously at the doors and windows every few seconds. If Edna noticed, she made no comment. I gave her cash for the room. She gave us a key from a row of mailboxes behind her. Before we left, she winked at us and told us to have a good time.
    The key let us through the lobby doors. We walked down faded red carpeting, up a set of creaking wooden stairs, and down faded brown carpeting to a room at the end of the hall.
    The room had one regular-sized bed with a salmon-colored chenille bedspread. The carpet was murky green. Two identical pictures of bubbling waterfalls were bolted to opposite walls.
    â€œWhat is this place?” Scott asked.
    I looked at the key. “Says the Luxor,” I said.
    â€œNever heard of it.”
    But I had. Scott hadn’t grown up in Chicago and wouldn’t
be expected to know, but I did. The Luxor had a reputation in the gay community as a place you could take a prostitute for an hour or two. Look up the word “sleaze” in the dictionary, and you’d find a picture of the Luxor Hotel. Supposedly, there were sex orgies on the roof on hot summer nights. Jockstrap parties on New Year’s Eve which could set up a call boy’s reputation for years. A Monday-afternoon lavish buffet for the transgender denizens of the hotel and their friends. A leather dungeon where home movies of S/M activity were shown continuously. We had seen absolutely no signs of this tawdry activity as we crossed the lobby. Rotten luck.
    I explained about the Luxor’s reputation to Scott and finished, “No one would look for us here. We’ll be safe for a while.”
    Scott wandered into the bathroom and returned instantly, shaking his head. I decided not to ask what he’d seen.
    â€œWe’ve got to call the cops,” he said.
    â€œOur enemies could be listening on police scanners, figuring since we’re good citizens, the logical thing to do would be to call the police. Even if they didn’t get here first, all they’d have to do would be to wait until the cops left, and move in. We need to be very careful. Maybe I can call Joe Quinn and explain what happened. They must have gotten calls from people about the traffic problems, and someone must have reported the gunshots. If I call him direct, we won’t have to worry about their putting it on the police radio.”
    â€œThey’re probably looking for us for stealing the guy’s carriage,” Scott said.
    â€œThey aren’t going to put us in jail for that.”
    It took nearly fifteen minutes of transferring around for me to get hold of Joe Quinn.
    â€œWhere are you?” he demanded.
    â€œIf you really wanted to find out,” I said, “you could
check the phone records at Eleventh and State and pinpoint the origin of this call. Could you just listen for a minute?”
    â€œWhat the hell happened outside your building?” he asked.
    â€œWe’re scared,” I said. “We aren’t at home. I don’t think that’s safe right now. We don’t want