reputation this place has got. I expected some reporter would dig it all up
again and just sorta put Grady in it as an excuse to rake over the scandals."
"What scandals?"
Watson shrugged. "Any big hotels have got scandals," he said. "Just like every
big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go. Sometimes one of em
will pop off in his room, heart attack or stroke or something like that. Hotels
are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on
the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that. Why, we lost a lady
just this last July. Ullman had to take care of that, and you can bet your ass
he did. That's what they pay him twenty-two thousand bucks a season for, and as
much as I dislike the little prick, he earns it. It's like some people just come
here to throw up and they hire a guy like Ullman to clean up the messes. Here's
this woman, must be sixty fuckin years old — my age! — and her hair's dyed just as
red as a whore's stoplight, tits saggin just about down to her belly button on
account of she ain't wearin no brassy-ear, big varycoarse veins all up and down
her legs so they look like a couple of goddam roadmaps, the jools drippin off
her neck and arms an hangin out her ears. And she's got this kid with her, he
can't be no more than seventeen, with hair down to his asshole and his crotch
bulgin 'like he stuffed it with the funnypages. So they're here a week, ten days
maybe, and every night it's the same drill. Down in the Colorado Lounge from
five to seven, her suckin up singapore slings like they're gonna outlaw em
tomorrow and him with just the one bottle of Olympia, suckin it, makin it last.
And she'd be makin jokes and sayin all these witty things, and every time she
said one he'd grin just like a fuckin ape, like she had strings tied to the
corners of his mouth. Only after a few days you could see it was gettin harder
an harder for him to grin, and God knows what he had to think about to get his
pump primed by bedtime. Well, they'd go in for dinner, him walkin and her
staggerin, drunk as a coot, you know, and he'd be pinchin the waitresses and
grinnin at em when she wasn't lookin. Hell, we even had bets on how long he'd
last."
Watson shrugged.
"Then he comes down one night around ten, sayin his 'wife' is 'indisposed' —
which meant she was passed out again like every other night they was there — and
he's goin to get her some stomach medicine. So off he goes in the little Porsche
they come in, and that's the last we see of him. Next morning she comes down and
tries to put on this big act, but all day she's gettin paler an paler, and Mr.
Ullman asks her, sorta diplomatic-like, would she like him to notify the state
cops, just in case maybe he had a little accident or something. She's on him
like a cat. No-no-no, he's a fine driver, she isn't worried, everything's under
control, he'll be back for dinner. So that afternoon she steps into the Colorado
around three and never has no dinner at all. She goes up to her room around ten-
thirty, and that's the last time anybody saw her alive."
"What happened?"
"County coroner said she took about thirty sleepin pills on top of all the
booze. Her husband showed up the next day, some big-shot lawyer from New York.
He gave old Ullman four different shades of holy hell. I'll sue this an I'll sue
that an when I'm through you won't even be able to find a clean pair of
underwear, stuff like that. But Ullman's good, the sucker. Ullman got him