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. âYou look like hell,â 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.
âIâm Edna,â she said. âI own the hotel. You boys look like you need some help.â
I didnât want to make long explanations, nor take her into our confidence. âWe need a room,â I said.
âSure,â 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.
âWhat is this place?â Scott asked.
I looked at the key. âSays the Luxor,â I said.
âNever heard of it.â
But I had. Scott hadnât grown up in Chicago and wouldnât
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 âsleazeâ in the dictionary, and youâd find a picture of the Luxor Hotel. Supposedly, there were sex orgies on the roof on hot summer nights. Jockstrap parties on New Yearâs Eve which could set up a call boyâs 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 Luxorâs reputation to Scott and finished, âNo one would look for us here. Weâll be safe for a while.â
Scott wandered into the bathroom and returned instantly, shaking his head. I decided not to ask what heâd seen.
âWeâve got to call the cops,â he said.
âOur enemies could be listening on police scanners, figuring since weâre good citizens, the logical thing to do would be to call the police. Even if they didnât get here first, all theyâd 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 wonât have to worry about their putting it on the police radio.â
âTheyâre probably looking for us for stealing the guyâs carriage,â Scott said.
âThey arenât going to put us in jail for that.â
It took nearly fifteen minutes of transferring around for me to get hold of Joe Quinn.
âWhere are you?â he demanded.
âIf you really wanted to find out,â I said, âyou could
check the phone records at Eleventh and State and pinpoint the origin of this call. Could you just listen for a minute?â
âWhat the hell happened outside your building?â he asked.
âWeâre scared,â I said. âWe arenât at home. I donât think thatâs safe right now. We donât want