11

This time the Duchess went to the door herself. Earlier she had dispatched her maid on an invented errand and instructed the secretary – who was terrified of dogs – to take the terriers for a walk.

A wave of cigar smoke accompanied Ogilvie in.

“My husband and I find strong smoke offensive. Would you kindly put that out?”

He ignored her. “Now then,” he said. “You two were in that hit-’n-run.”

She met his eyes directly. “What are you talking about?”

“You listen to me. This city’s burning mad – cops, mayor, everybody else. They find who did that last night, who killed that kid and its mother. And we all know who that is. I can go to the police right now if you want it.”

It was the Duke of Croydon who interjected, “What you accuse us of is true. I was driving the car and killed the little girl. What is it you know?”

“Last night, you drove to Lindy’s Place in Irish Bayou in your fancy Jaguar, and you took a lady friend. You won a hundred at the tables, then lost it at the bar. You were into a second hundred when your wife got there in a taxi. You and your wife took off home, you were driving…”

The Duchess interrupted. “You can’t possibly prove…”

“Lady, I can prove all I need to. Last night I saw you come in – through the basement, both rather shaken. Late last night the word was out about the hit-’n-run. On a hunch I went to the garage and took a quiet look at your car. Oh yeah, I should tell you. There’s plenty of blood, though it doesn’t show too much on the black paint.

“And the police got some things to go on. They got a headlight trim ring, some headlight glass. They can figure out what kind of car they are from – make, model, and maybe the year, or close to it. With your car being foreign, it’ll likely take a few days.

“But when you hit that kid you were going away from town, not to it. You must have made a mistake in the route. The police have not figured it yet. They’re looking for somebody who was headed out. That’s why, right now, they’re working on the suburbs and outside of the town. So there is a four-day delay.”

“How could that help us – the delay?”

“It might,” Ogilvie said. “If you can get the car out of the South.”

“That wouldn’t be easy.”

“No, ma’am. Every state around – Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, all the rest’ll be watching for a car damaged the way yours is.”

It was essential, the Duchess of Croydon knew, that her thinking remain calm and reasoned.

Today was Tuesday. From all that this man said, they had until Friday or Saturday at best.

The Duchess faced Ogilvie. “How much do you want?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

Though it was twice what she had expected, her expression did not change.

“What would we receive in return?”

“I keep quiet about what I know.”

“No. We will not pay you.”

“Now listen, lady…”

“I will not listen. Instead, you will listen to me. We would achieve nothing by paying you, except possibly a few days’ delay.” What came next, the Duchess of Croydon knew, could be the most significant thing she had ever done. She intended to gamble on the fat man’s greed. “We will pay you twenty-five thousand dollars. In return for that,” she continued evenly, “you will drive our car north.”

The silence hung. At length Ogilvie spoke. “Is this cigar bothering you, Duchess?”

As she nodded, he put it out.

12

Christine closed the menu and looked at him. “You order for both of us.”

They were in the city’s finest restaurant, Brennans Restaurant, in the French Quarter. Peter had a sense of wellbeing and delight in Christine’s company. Now, accepting Christine’s suggestion, he ordered for them both.

“With a well-run kitchen, as they have here,” Peter said, “decisions about food ought not to matter much. It’s a question of choice between equal qualities.”

“Your hotelship’s showing. But I like it. I’ve sometimes wondered, though, how you started your career.”

“I was a bellboy in Manhattan who became ambitious. One night I put a drunk to bed – helped him upstairs, got him in pajamas and tucked him in. It turned out that he was a writer for The New Yorker. A week or two after he called us ‘the hotel that’s gentler than mother’s milk.’ We took a lot of kidding, but it made the hotel look good. And I got noticed.

“That same summer they let me try other jobs in the hotel, including helping out at the bar. I was at the bar alone when a customer came in, ‘I hear you’re the bright boy The New Yorker wrote about. Can you mix me a Rusty Nail? I happened to have read about it in a book about mixing drinks the other day. Anyway, I mixed it and afterward he said, ‘That’s good, but you won’t learn the hotel business this way.’ Then he gave me his card and told me to see him next day.

“As it turned out, he didn’t own anything. His name was Herb Fischer and he was a salesman. But he knew the hotel business, and most people in it, because it was there he did his selling.”

“Tell me about Mr. Fischer.”

“Well, at first I thought he was just a big talker. But he badgered some hotel people into recommending me to the School of Hotel Administration, and they offered me a scholarship.”

Peter continued thoughtfully, “I owe a lot to Herb Fischer. I tried to thank him – the same way I tried to like him. But he wouldn’t let me do either. I found out afterward his commissions weren’t big. I paid him back by sending checks for small amounts. Most were never cashed.”

“Why don’t you see him any more?”

“He died,” Peter said. “I went to the funeral. And I found there were eight of us there – whom he’d all helped in the same kind of way.”

Christine was quiet through coffee.

“Thanks to him, I now know one thing I want to achieve – or at least something like it. I’ll show you.”

They left Brennan’s. Taking Christine’s arm, Peter led her diagonally across Royal Street. “That’s what I’d like to create,” he said. “Something at least as good, or maybe better.”

There it was, the Royal Orleans Hotel, the finest hotel in North America.

“They’ve everything – history, style, and imagination. They proved you can build freshly yet retain old character. The Royal Orleans is a chain hotel.” He added, “But not Curtis O’Keefe’s kind.”

“More like Peter McDermott’s?”

“There’s a long way to go for that.”

“Yes,” Christine said, “I know. But you’ll do it.”

13

In the dining room of Warren Trent’s private suite, Curtis O’Keefe puffed at a cigar. Directly across, Dodo, in a clinging black gown, inhaled on a Turkish cigarette, which Royce had also produced and lighted.

“A fine meal, Warren. Please compliment your chef.”

“By the way, you may like to know that precisely the same meal was available tonight in my main dining room.”

The hotel magnate observed, “There aren’t many hotels nowadays offering that kind of cuisine. Most had to change their ways.”

“Most but not all.”

“Our entire business has changed, Warren, since you and I were young in it – whether we like the fact or not. What the public expects nowadays from a hotel is an ‘efficient, economic package. The big houses like yours – if they want to survive my kind of competition – have to think as I do.”

Warren Trent said sharply, “I haven’t spent my life building an institution to see it become a cheap-run joint.”

“If you’re referring to my houses, none of them are that.” O’Keefe reddened angrily.

In the cold, ensuing silence Dodo asked, “Will it be a real fight or just a words one?”

Both men laughed.

Warren Trent continued, “My instinct tells me plenty of people still like to travel first class. They’re the ones who expect something more than boxes with beds.”

“But jet airplanes killed first-class travel, and an entire state of mind along with it.”

Royce brought another cigarette to Dodo, and Warren Trent found himself wondering how Aloysius’s father might have reacted to the news that control of the hotel might soon pass on to other hands. Warren Trent could almost hear him now, asserting in his cracked voice, “You had your own way so long. But if you believe in something, you fight for it.”

O’Keefe said, “In my organization I’ve had a blueprint developed for the future.

“The first thing we’ll have simplified is Reception, where checking in will take a few seconds at the most. There’ll be a kind of instant sorting office, masterminded by an IBM brain that is ready now.

“Guests with reservations will be sent a keycoded card. They’ll insert it in a frame and immediately be on their way by individual escalator section to their room.

“For those driving their own cars there’ll be coded, moving lights to guide them into personal parking stalls, from where other individual escalators will take them directly to their rooms.

“All services will have automated room delivery systems. And apart from other benefits, I’ll break the tipping system, a tyranny we’ve suffered – along with our guests – for years too long. My building design and automation will keep to a minimum the need for any guest room to be entered by a hotel employee. All this, and more, can be accomplished now.”

“I hope,” Warren Trent said firmly, “that I never live to see it happen in my house.”

“You won’t,” O’Keefe informed him. “Before it can happen here we’ll have to tear down your house and build again.”

Dodo seemed surprised. “I think this is a swell hotel.” She turned her wide and seemingly innocent eyes toward O’Keefe. “Curtie, why’ll you have to pull it down?”

Curtis O’Keefe glanced at her sharply. There were moments when he wondered if Dodo were perhaps a little brighter than generally she allowed herself to seem.

“I was merely reviewing a possibility. Warren, it’s time you were out of the hotel business. Even your hotel staff is no longer loyal to you.” At length he said, “You’ve an old employee, haven’t you, who runs your Pontalba Bar?”

“Yes – Tom Earlshore. If there’s one man I’d trust with anything, it’s Tom.”

“You’d be a fool if you did,” O’Keefe said crisply. “I’ve information that he’s bleeding you white.”

In the shocked silence O’Keefe recited the facts. There were a multiplicity of ways in which a dishonest bartender could steal from his employer. “I’d say it’s been going on a long time. Your supposedly loyal staff is riddled with corruption. Naturally, I haven’t all the details, but those I have you’re welcome to. If you wish I’ll have a report prepared.”

“Thank you.” The words were whispered. At last, slowly and with a trace of weariness, Warren Trent announced, “What you have told me may make a difference to my own position.”

“In any case, now we’ve reached that point I’d like to have you consider a proposal.” In brief, Curtis O’Keefe described the mortgage crisis the hotel was in. Warren Trent was not surprised he knew everything.

“My proposal,” Curtis O’Keefe said, “is a purchase price for this hotel of four million dollars. Of this, two millions will be obtained by renewing your present mortgage. The balance will be a million dollars cash, enabling you to pay off your minority stockholders, and one million dollars in O’Keefe Hotels stock – a new issue to be arranged. Additionally, you will have the privilege of retaining your apartment here for as long as you live.”

Warren Trent sat motionless, his face neither revealing his thoughts nor his surprise. The terms were better than he had expected. But he said abruptly, “Suppose I refuse to sell. What are your plans?”

“I shall look for other property and build. The competition we’ll provide will force you out of business. And I’d prefer your answer at once.”

The truth was: the O’Keefe Hotel Corporation wanted the St. Gregory very much, and urgently. The lack of an O’Keefe affiliate in New Orleans was like a missing tooth in the company’s otherwise solid bite on the traveling public.

“I’m not prepared to give you an answer now.”

“I’d like to leave here no later than Thursday night.”