She Walks in Beauty Read online

  Like what? Sam wondered, then shouted the question over the general buzz. Like what?

  Eloise Lemon answered. “‘Do you think Miss America should embrace any social causes? And if you were Miss America, what would your cause be?’”

  Oh, Lord, Sam thought. Give me a break. “And how have the young women answered that?”

  “How would you answer that?” Eloise shot back.

  “I’d champion a woman’s right to control her destiny by controlling her body. But being pro-choice probably wouldn’t win me Miss America.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Besides, one answer doesn’t make the difference. It’s the whole interview process, how they handle themselves. In fact, why don’t you come up here and we’ll show you how it’s done,” Eloise challenged.

  The press corps laughed, then urged Sam on. Do it. Do it.

  “Me?” Was Eloise for real?

  “Yes, you,” said Eloise. “Come on up here and we’ll show you how it feels to be in the hot seat. Right now! Hurry up! Don’t keep the judges waiting, young lady.”

  2

  Big Gloria, the Monopoly Hotel’s head of housekeeping, was keeping an eye on Wayne Ward. The sucker thought he was something cute. She’d asked him what he was doing, going in and out of rooms after they’d already been cleaned. He knew that was against the rules. Assistant to Mr. Franken, he said. Special assistant to the Man What Am, owns this casino hotel, not to mention half of the United States. Shoooot.

  Gloria strolled down the hall of the 18th floor to get a better look.

  “Wayne, what are you doing? I thought you finished all that last week. Big deal security doo-flatchies, whirly-diddlies you installed in the pageant judges’ rooms.” As if they didn’t already have enough security in this hotel to put the FBI to shame.

  Everybody snooping. In the casinos, dealers watching the players. Floormen watching the dealers. Pit bosses watching the floormen. Shift managers staring at the pit bosses. Assistant casino manager, casino manager, vice president; it went on and on, made you afraid to pick your nose—somebody would be taking pictures, accusing you of snorting, cheating, or dealing.

  Wayne Ward let his icy blue eyes drift over toward her like he hadn’t seen her before. Like he was being cool.

  The truth was, he wasn’t bad-looking—for a white man. He was around six feet. She could look him square in his cool blues. Though she’d like to squirt some Windex on those aviator specs covered with fingerprints set on his pointy nose. He wore his wavy brown hair long, like a girl’s. Parted in the middle, it hung down in his bony face. He was too skinny for her taste, jeans just barely holding on. Gloria liked a man who weighed in about 250, she didn’t have to be afraid she was gonna break him in two.

  “Whirly-diddlies.” Wayne laughed, snorting at what Gloria had said. Hee-haw. “I like that. Like to whirly-diddle you, Gloria.”

  Gloria didn’t like that kind of talk. Down and dirty was all behind her now. She was a churchgoing lady. “Get out of here,” she said. “Get on with you.”

  “Can’t do it. Gotta finish my special assignment.”

  Wayne always talked like that. Special assignment. Special assistant. She’d noticed that about him before—and the way he wore that little black hat that said Monopoly Special Staff on it cocked to one side like he was marching off to war.

  If you asked her, the man was too old to be playing soldier. He must be thirty, thirty-five, old as her. Certainly too old to be pretending he was one of Mr. Franken’s top assistants, that was for sure.

  The men who were numero uno staff, Gloria had seen them; her girls cleaned their rooms when they flew in from Dallas. They all wore nice dark suits.

  Not blue work shirts, jeans, tennis shoes. That was Wayne.

  Wayne, who she bet was crazy. The way he snorted when he laughed, cold blue eyes wild like a spooked horse. He had to be crazy, or on drugs, which in Gloria’s book was more or less the same thing. He talked a lot about magic mushrooms he ate in Mexico. He should have left them to the Mexicans, like jalapeños. They knew how to handle that stuff.

  “Yep, Mr. F’s gonna like this a lot. Gonna be real proud.” Wayne grinned, patting the big tool case he’d been carrying with him everywhere the past week. Like he had something humongous in there, was gonna slip to Misses Louisiana, Georgia, New Jersey, Texas, and West Virginia stacked right under one another in 1705, 1605, 1505, 1405, 1205—all in suites done in pale blue.

  Then Wayne stopped in front of 1801.

  Gloria didn’t have to look at her room chart. That was that nice newspaperwoman from Atlanta, Miz Adams, Harpo, her cute little dog, and her cute young man. That Adams woman had herself some good taste. The fact was, Gloria had already walked Harpo once. Miz Adams said she’d ’preciate it if she did, paid her $5 for each time, 25 in advance, just like she’d passed Go, right on the spot when they’d checked in yesterday, and Gloria was working an extra shift. She’d said she and the young man might be too busy to do it some time, and she didn’t want to have to worry about him. The dog, she’d laughed, not the young man. He’s the one I’d be worried about, Gloria had allowed. Well, don’t you go walking him, Miz Adams had popped back with her pretty grin. Gloria told those porters downstairs, Keep away from that animal. Those boys, always bucking for extra tips, didn’t know diddle.

  Just like her Junior. Boys got to be sixteen, in trouble all the time, smart-mouthy, thought they were men. They made you wanta shoot ’em. Junior was real bright, but he didn’t know squat. Twice this month he’d got nabbed shoplifting at Ocean One Mall down the Boardwalk. It was a good thing both times security was somebody she knew. Last time they called her up and said, Gloria, come on down here and get this boy. Send us a check for the $88.95 he owes us for a T-shirt says nasty rap things on it, pair of them Reeboks, cushion your feet, you blow them up.

  Gloria was gonna blow something up, all right. Gonna blow up Junior’s head.

  She was mumbling that very thing to herself earlier this morning when that cute young man of Miz Adams’s, call him Harry he said after he’d said good morning, came ambling along the hall with the little dog. Said he’d walk him, he needed a breath of fresh air. Gloria was still muttering to herself about Junior. The next thing she knew, she and Harry are having a sit down, talking about Louisiana.

  She grew up there, in the north part of the state in a little town called Bastrop. It stank like the paper mill. Her father was a carpenter, plumber, electrician, you name it, he could build it or fix it. Mama stayed home, raised the kids, all seven of them. Gloria was the only girl and the youngest. Sometimes Gloria wished she was back, that she’d never run off to Atlantic City when she was a young thing. She’d thought it’d be so cool to live with her Aunt Baby and all those Yankees by the ocean.

  Harry said he’d been up there, North Louisiana. But he said it the way folks from South Louisiana did, like they were talking about a foreign country. And it was, to them. North Louisiana was full of Baptists, white bread, no fun.

  That sure wuddn’t New Orleans. New Orleans was where people really had themselves a good time, like people in Atlantic City only imagined they were. Big Gloria said New Orleans was where she should have moved to, gone to stay with her Aunt Beautiful.

  Harry said why didn’t she. He said he didn’t know how she could stand all this ugly, even if it was right on the water.

  She said it really did get on her nerves. ’Specially since you get one block behind the casinos, you got nothing but real bad slums. But there she was. She had a job. She had a little house out toward the Inlet she’d papered and painted and fixed up. You get situated in a place, even one terrible as this, you know folks, work in your church, it’s hard to leave. And then there was Junior, her boy, the one’s driving her crazy.

  Harry’d said, Give me a dollar, Gloria. I’m going to earn you a stake to get you outta here, back home.

  Get on with you, she’d said.

  You’ll be sorry if you don’t. I’m a mean motor scooter whe
n it comes to blackjack.

  Now, thinking about Harry, it was like she conjured him up. Here he came again, just seconds after crazy Wayne swiveled a hip, feinted, let himself with his master key into 1803, that Mr. Kurt Roberts’s room, who was a pageant judge.

  “Did we win?” Gloria hollered down the hall.

  Harry raised a little white baseball cap he was wearing, said Miss America Pageant on it. He waved it in the air like a cowboy, leaned his head back, and laughed, showing lots of pretty white teeth. That cap looked a lot better on him than Wayne’s Special Staff hat did on that goon. But anything’d look good on Harry, above that handsome face, those pink cheeks. She even liked the way his left eyelid drooped, just a little. It was kind of sexy, what with those steel-gray eyes.

  “Won us a little bundle at the blackjack table. Sure did,” said Harry. “And I tell you what, Gloria. I’m going to give you half of it to hold on to for us. So there’s no way I’ll lose everything, if Lady Luck deserts us and I go berserk.” He handed her $280. “That’s half of what I won, and half of that’s yours to keep for good.”

  “Are you nuts? Why do you want to do this?”

  “’Cause you’re homefolks,” said Harry. “And I think what homefolks got to do is stick together when they’re out in the cold and cruel like this. We keep going this way, we’ll get you and your Junior back to God’s country by the end of the week. And that’s a promise.”

  *

  Inside 1803, Wayne Ward was hard at work. He was sweating like a pig even with the air-conditioning. Rooms like this made him nervous. Fancy drapes, pillows, cushions, knickknacks, carved woodwork, patterns—it was too much. There were too many things you couldn’t control.

  Of course, it was perfect for hiding things, which was only one of Wayne’s many talents.

  He was very clever about hiding things. Tiny state-of-the-art cameras tucked into the china cabinet at one end, a lamp at the other, constantly surveyed the living room. They worked even in the dark. He’d tucked more cameras in the bedroom (in the chandelier, bed canopy) and the bathroom (behind a two-way mirrored panel). The cameras fed videotape recorders and also projected live onto monitors in Wayne’s studio. A couple of them needed a little fine-tuning, which was one of the things he had come to do.

  The phone taps were easy. The reception on the recording devices was perfect.

  But not until today had he finished with his pet project. He loved implanting subliminal messages. It was really cool, and it was a miracle the things you could get people to do!

  Wayne knew the subliminal business up one side and down the other, which came in awfully handy if you’re in the casino business. You plugged in “Play, play, play. Stay, stay, stay.” Those suckers never went to bed, stayed up gambling 48 hours straight.

  Where he’d refined subliminals was with Mr. F’s FrankFairs. What you did was mix the words right into the stores’ music track: “I am an honest person. I do not steal.” You could cut down shrinkage, which is to say stealing, by one hell of a lot. Using subliminals along with the closed-circuit TV monitors and the TellTags, you could bump down your shrinkage twenty percent. You could bump up your sales, too. All you had to do was feed ’em things like, “Great sale in housewares. Stock up now.” It worked like a dream.

  ’Course, it worked too when you fooled around. “I gotta go to the bathroom bad. Now.” Wayne was up there in the control room of a store in Philly laughing like crazy until they figured it out. Mr. F had seen the humor of it, too. He had a good laugh, but he then took off those little round glasses he wore along with his Stetson, wiped them, looked real serious, and said, Wayne, it’s funny, but it’s not cost effective.

  Wayne saw his point. All those customers running stiff-legged, knocking each other down to get to the rest rooms, they used toilet paper, soap, water, paper towels, cleaning services.

  But then, that was the kind of thing that made Mr. Franken who he was: Not just your run-of-the-mill casino-hotel owner, but king of the discount stores in the whole United States too. The world, actually. The Japanese couldn’t get enough of him, and first day they’d knocked a hole in that Berlin Wall, he’d hit those Commies so fast with FrankFairs it’d made their heads spin. The Wall of China was next.

  Wayne truly loved Mr. F, who, though only ten years Wayne’s senior, was his daddy and his mama and his teacher and the Baby Jesus all rolled into one. No one else had ever been as kind to him. Certainly not his daddy, who’d split months before he and his twin brother John popped out of the chute. John, beating him by forty-five minutes, would always be Mom’s favorite. Wayne never would catch up. Fraternal twins, Mom was always careful to say, like Wayne didn’t have any feelings.

  Mr. F never said things like that. He always called Wayne his right-hand man—which meant a lot, considering that Mr. F really didn’t have one, right hand or right arm, that is. He’d picked Wayne up when he was down, recognized his skills and his innate human worth. Mr. F was very big on that, people’s innate human worth.

  Though Wayne had been a little worried lately about what Mr. Franken thought Dougie was worth. Mr. F’s nephew Dougie was one of those suit-wearing jerks. He drove a BMW and thought a brand-spanking-new MBA meant he owned the world. He was sucking up to Mr. F the minute he hit the scene, fresh from Wharton. Wharton School of Business, he said. It made Wayne nervous. Mr. F couldn’t have two right-hand men. One would have to be left. And left-hand meant left behind. Hind tit. Wayne had had enough of that with brother John.

  That was why he was so set on making this a good job. He’d show Mr. F. You wanted a big job done right, you sent Wayne Ward. No smarty-pants MBA didn’t know his butt from East Jesus. Period. End of discussion.

  *

  Out in the hall, Harry had just finished telling Gloria how he’d won the $560 in no time flat at blackjack—starting with drawing a pair of aces and splitting them to bet two red chips on each—when Wayne came sidling out of 1803. Gloria watched him absentminded like reach back and jiggle the knob of 1801, Harry and Miz Adams’s room.

  Then Gloria watched the smile on Harry’s face fade. “Hey, buddy,” he said. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

  Gloria kept waiting for Harpo, who must be inside the room, to bark. Wayne wouldn’t know he weighed only twelve pounds. Maybe he’d think he was a German shepherd.

  “Don’t think nothing, buddy.” Wayne put a little English on the word just to show Harry. Then Wayne gave him a shoulder and pushed on by.

  Exactly what Gloria thought: Wayne was stupid and rude.

  “Now, wait a minute.” That was Harry. Wayne had pissed him off, Gloria could tell. The color in Harry’s cheeks was glowing now. He followed Wayne down the hall.

  “Excuse me, excuse me.”

  Those words came from behind Gloria. She turned and saw this short white woman with a real pretty face like a Kewpie doll, big turquoise eyes, pale lips outlined dark. She was wearing a leopard print jumpsuit that was holding on real tight to her healthy chest with its paws. Her all whicha-colored hair was pulled up in a little curly thing on top, swished over in a big wave at the front.

  The woman said in a little-girl voice, “I wonder if you could help me?”

  Gloria had heard rich white ladies—most of them who stayed in this hotel were, rich, that is—talk like that before. Like they were helpless. The truth was, most of them were about as helpless as Godzilla once they got their minds on something they wanted.

  Now, what was this one studying?

  On down the hall, Harry said, “Man, I’m warning you. I’m going to call security right this minute.”

  Gloria thought Harry had made the right decision. He didn’t want to lay his hands on Wayne. Wayne didn’t have it in him to fight fair. Gloria figured him to have a switchblade tucked somewhere. That seemed about his speed.

  “I am security, bub,” Wayne announced.

  “And I’m the Jolly Green Giant.”

  Miss Kewpie Doll pointed at the door of 1805. �
�I’m supposed to be meeting Miss New Jersey here.”

  See? thought Gloria. Rich white woman knew exactly what she wanted, no matter that the two men were about to tear into each other like a pair of pit bulls.

  Turning her head this way and that, Gloria had about all she could handle following the three of them like they were playing Ping-Pong. It was a good thing that the old man who’d been there earlier looking for Mr. Roberts was gone. She’d really have her hands full.

  “But there’s no answer,” Kewpie went on. “I’m a pageant hostess. You know, we help the girls with whatever they need, run errands for the pageant officials, some of us work as chaperones. I need to leave her something. Do you think you could let me in?”

  The woman must think she was a fool. She must be some new reporter who’d dolled herself up, trying to get the inside scoop. Those pageant hostesses, couple of hundred white lady volunteers from the AC area, Absecon, some from down to Avalon, Stone Harbor, ran a tighter ship than even hotel security. They’d have all the room numbers memorized and besides, they’d know that no hotel staff, nobody else for that matter, was letting anybody near those girls.

  “Which room did you say?” Gloria asked it real polite, putting her on, knowing the TV cameras right up there in what looked like the sprinklers were recording her on tape. Audio and video both.

  “Room 1805.” Now Miss Kewpie was looking kind of flustered—like that was going to cut some ice. She scrabbled through her purse. “I think I have the right number. Maybe it was 1803? Or 1802? I think it was 1802.”

  “What exactly do you want with Miss New Jersey, ma’am?” Gloria asked, thinking this was her day. Here Harry was earning her a grubstake, for no good reason except the Lord must have sent him, all her praying at the Community Baptist Church down at the Inlet. Now this silly white lady and that stupid Wayne were taking her mind off her troubles. Junior. Aunt Baby in the hospital. Car payment overdue.

  At that, Miss Kewpie bolted. She got up a pretty good speed on her, too, considering those high-heeled sandals. She disappeared through the stair door marked Exit like the devil was on her tail.