Chapter 3 - The Service Door
The alley behind the Meridian Hotel was paved with worn Belgian block that held dark mirrors of rainwater in every depression. Steam vent pipes from the basement boiler chattered continuously, sending plumes of sulfur-scented vapor into the cold air.
Delaney stood beneath the corrugated iron awning, her arms crossed over her apron. She had retrieved her own raincoat from her locker—a canvas trench with frayed cuffs—and now wore it over her work clothes. Noel Ferraro sat in the rear of a dark gray sedan twenty feet away, the engine idling with barely a whisper. Margarite Voss stood by the car’s open rear door, holding a paper cup of lukewarm coffee from the twenty-four-hour diner around the corner, her posture defensive and taut.
The heavy steel service door behind Delaney opened, its dragging hinge groaning against the jamb. Ronan Pike emerged, flanked by two younger security officers wearing nylon Meridian jackets.
“Your final check will be mailed to the Transit Street address, Marsh,” Pike said, stepping onto the wet stones. He held a clipboard beneath a clear plastic sleeve. “You’re off the schedule as of eleven-fifteen tonight. Cause: gross misconduct, physical aggression toward an invited guest, and failure to obey supervisor instructions during an active incident.”
Delaney did not turn around. She watched the mouth of the alley where it met Weybosset Street.
“You didn’t mail my mother’s final check either,” Delaney said, her voice dry. “She had to come down to the timekeeper’s office three times with her oxygen tube in a canvas bag. You told her the records were in off-site storage.”
Pike’s jaw set. “That was business. This is business.”
“You’re consistent, Ronan,” she said. “I’ll give you that. You’ve been taking five-hundred-dollar envelopes from Vance Hollis since the year they poured the concrete for the parking garage, and you still have to wear a polyester tie to work.”
One of the younger guards shifted his weight nervously, glancing toward the street. Pike took half a step forward, his hand dropping toward his belt, but the sudden glare of twin headlights swinging into the alley stopped him cold.
A black Buick turned slowly off Weybosset, its long hood cutting through the rain. The tires crunched against the wet stone with a deliberate, heavy cadence. The car did not stop at the mouth of the alley; it rolled forward until its bumper was less than four feet from Pike’s knees, the yellow fog lamps casting long, distorted shadows of the three guards against the brick wall of the hotel.
The driver’s door opened, and Auggie Renshaw stepped out. He did not look at Pike. He walked around to the passenger side, opened the rear door, and stood with his back to the rain, holding a large black umbrella over the opening.
Elias Ferraro stepped out onto the cobblestones.
He looked around the alley once—taking in the steam vents, the dark gray sedan where Noel sat, the two younger guards whose faces had instantly drained of color, and finally Delaney Marsh, who stood solitary beneath the iron awning.
Pike cleared his throat, the sound catching in his windpipe. “Mr. Ferraro. We have... the situation upstairs is under control. Noel is uninjured. We were just arranging—”
Elias did not look at Pike. He walked directly past the three guards as though they were empty trash barrels and stopped two paces from Delaney.
Up close, Elias looked younger than his reputation suggested, but his face had the hard, finished quality of stone carved for an exterior facade. He took off his leather gloves, one finger at a time, and tucked them into his overcoat pocket.
“My sister told me you have a very fast right leg,” Elias said.
Delaney met his eyes. Her own were dark hazel, clear and completely devoid of the deference Elias was accustomed to seeing in people who worked along the hospitality corridor.
“He was off-balance,” Delaney said. “He had twelve ounces of single malt in him and he was looking at the room instead of his feet. A child could have dropped him.”
“A child didn’t,” Elias noted. “A room full of men with trust funds and city appointments sat on their hands while he pulled at her clothes. You stepped out from behind the mahogany.”
“I have a rule about my bar,” Delaney said.
“What rule is that?”
“Whatever happens across the brass is my business until the bill is settled.”
Elias studied her face. For a fraction of a second, something like amusement flickered in his pale eyes, then vanished beneath the cold surface. He reached into his coat and produced Noel’s small silver wristlet, which had been retrieved from the floor near the marble pillar, along with the leather-bound violin case that Auggie had carried from the trunk.
“Noel will not return to the Meridian,” Elias said. “Neither will you.”
“I’m aware,” Delaney said, glancing at Pike’s clipboard. “Mr. Pike has already explained my professional deficiencies.”
Elias turned his head slowly, looking at Pike for the first time since stepping out of the car. The security director stood perfectly still beneath the rain, the water dripping from the brim of his cap onto his plastic-wrapped clipboard.
“Ronan,” Elias said softly.
“Mr. Ferraro,” Pike stammered, his fingers tightening on the clipboard until the plastic groaned. “The boy was drunk. Vance is downstairs in the private salon with the council president. We couldn’t have a scene on the roof that brought the patrol cruisers around the front. It would have ruined the zoning vote.”
“You let a boy touch Noel because of a zoning vote?” Elias asked. His voice did not rise. It remained conversational, almost intimate.
“I didn’t know she was your sister until after,” Pike said, his words tripping over each other. “I swear to God, Elias. She was just at a table with two violin students. If I had known—”
“If you had known she was a Ferraro, you would have protected her,” Elias finished for him. “Which means you believe that women who are not Ferraros are fair game for Vance Hollis’s son.”
Pike opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Elias stepped closer to him. He did not shout; he did not draw a weapon. He simply reached out and took the clipboard from Pike’s hand. He removed the sheet of termination paperwork with Delaney’s name on it, folded it twice with precise, sharp creases, and placed it inside his own breast pocket.
“You will go upstairs to Vance’s private salon,” Elias told Pike. “You will tell him that his son is currently on the floor of the twenty-second-story lounge with a cracked sternum and two ruined trousers. You will tell him to leave his dessert on the table and meet me at the East Side boat basin in one hour. If he is not there, I will have the licensing bureau revoke the hotel’s occupancy permit before the morning delivery trucks arrive.”
Pike nodded once, his eyes wide, then turned and nearly fell over his own feet as he scrambled through the steel service door, followed closely by his two guards.
The alley fell silent again, save for the rain and the low hum of the Buick’s engine.
Elias turned back to Delaney. “You live on Transit Street?”
“Number seventy-four,” she said. “The third floor.”
“The roof leaks near the chimney,” Elias said.
May you like
Delaney’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How would you know that?”
“My family built number seventy-four in nineteen-oh-eight for the foremen at the boiler works,” Elias said. “We still hold the ground lease. Get in the car, Miss Marsh. I am going to buy you breakfast, and then we are going to discuss your mother’s pension.”
