Chapter 4 -- Nat's last night
Although Rocco did only what was absolutely necessary to
maintain the motel, he had spared no expense when installing the surveillance
equipment.
He knew where the real money was, and I’m sure he kept a
library of tapes from those officials who came here supposedly incognito.
Yet, in the ever-changing field of technology, even his
system was already out of date, recording on CDs and servers that would have
made security professionals scoff.
For Rocco’s purposes, however, it was more than enough.
I had seen some f the camera bubbles at various exterior
locations, half globes of dark glass behind which the tell-tale camera lenses
hid. No great secret to the more than casual observer, although many of these
were tucked away in odd crooks and crannies. How many cameras Rocco had; it was
hard to tell.
He led me to the rear room off the office, and I saw the
banks of TV screens that encircled the small room.
“Goddamn it, Rocco,” I said, glancing from screen to screen.
“Do you have every room bugged?”
“I’m not pervert,” Rocco said. “I don’t bug the rooms. I
just watch what goes on outside and in the office.”
“Okay,” I said, doubting his statement, but willing to take
is word if only to see what he was willing to show. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Rocco sat down before one of the larger screens, hands
moving over a control that called up an image of the office as seen from above
and behind. No sound came. The image showed a dark-haired kid seated at the
front deck, looking board, playing some kind of game on his cell phone.
The front door opened. In walked Nat, looking even heavier
than when I last saw him, wearing a white shirt, a dark tie and wrinkled suit
jacket. He looked moist despite the chill of the night.
My gaze was drawn to the woman that walked into the office
behind him, thin, but not tall, yet inches taller than Nat was. She wore a
tight-fitting black dress that emphasized all her curves. I could not see her
face clearly, but I got the impression from the clerk’s expression that she was
someone worthy of a long look. I could see the thick black mascara around her
eyes, red lipstick matching her sharp fingernails.
Nat did all the talking which I could also not hear and
signed the register. He also took the key from the clerk and led the woman back
out the front door.
Rocco fiddled with controls. The visual changed to a view of
the office from the parking lot, showing Nat and the woman coming out of the
door, then turning down the concrete path that led to the line of model rooms.
I could barely see them in the dim light, lease of all her
with her black hair. Part of Nat’s white shirt showed from under the suit
jacket. At intervals, I saw his moist face and his hands waving in animated
gestures.
This was all Nat, a classic fat man over indulging in the
presence of a beautiful woman, a man who spent is life compensating for his
lack of looks with clever dialogue and exaggeration, aching practically from
the day he was born to have women like this admire him and now, finally, he
found one, and could not stop spouting.
Nat’s whole life was about getting in on the action, aching
not just for the women other men got, but for raw power that tended to illude
fat me in this society. Most of his success was motivated by his need to prove
himself equal or better than his peers, either in school or later in live, yet
always seeing someone better than he was, motivating him even more, and even
when he reached the pinnacle of his career, other people still got what he
wanted.
He used to talk about those glory days when he worked for
the now-defunct Hudson City News, during the high days of open corruption when
the mob operated opening and Hudson Boulevard was a haven for prostitution,
gambling and drugs, and reporters too their piece to keep the worst of it from
making headlines.
Nat was the second string columnist then to a guy named Dix,
who was so openly corrupt people dropped off envelopes of cash at the office
just ahead of deadline.
“I hated Dix,” Nat told me once. “He was always doing bad
things.”
By bad things, Nat also meant getting some of the prettiest
prostitutes sent Dix’s way instead of cash, while Nat got to sit on the
sidelines to watch his coworker live the life of glory.
Nat took some satisfaction when Dix’s godfather, then mayor
of West Hudson City, got caught up in a massive corruption sting.
The conviction swept into office a bunch of reformers that
had no use for Dix or the culture that had helped create him. Neither did the
newspaper, who promptly fired Dix and paved the way for Nat to become chief
columnist.
But it was an empty victor since all the perks he imagined
he wanted vanished with Dix and the culture that had created him, making it easy
for Nat to go confession with a clear conscience, maintaining virtue never
tested. And while his column had a mean streak as deep and nasty as anything Dix
used to excoriate his enemies, Nat got little from it except scorn and the
hatred of politicians he brought to task.
Nat did, however, often highlight pretty women in his column
with the hope that this might translate into a taste of what Dix had gotten in
the past, but while the women were grateful for the public acclaim, they shied
away from this elderly, smelly fat man – that was until the night of his death.
He video showed the odd couple pausing before one of the
doors about half way along one wing of the motel courtyard. Nat made a big deal
of opening the door and motioning his date inside.
The counter on the tape recorded the time at 2:10 a.m. when
the door closed.
Rocco forwarded the tape to 2:30 when the door sprang open,
and the girl came out. Another figure hurried down the inner walk to meet her.
“What’s this about?” I asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” Rocco said. “But I think she called
someone when your friend died on her.”
The woman’s erratic gestures indicated just how upset she
was.
“Can you zoom in on the other person?” I asked.
“Sure, but it won’t be too clear,” Rocco said, then
complied, the image growing more and more blurry as it grew larger on the screen.
Right off, I could see it was a man, somewhat taller than
the woman, but not more than five foot ten, with dark hair and dark clothing,
which I first mistook for a uniform – a cop or a fire fighter – but apparently
was neither. He simply had the bearing of a cop. When he spoke, one of his
front teeth glistened with reflected light, a gold or silver tooth that gave
his identity away.
“I’ll be damned,” I said.
“You know him?” Rocco said, looking over his shoulder at me
with an expression of surprise.
“Possibly,” I said, recalling one or two of the handful of
people I knew with a gold front tooth, and one man in particular dirty enough to
be pimping prostitutes, high class or low. “If this is who I think it is, then there
is something deeply amiss in all this.”
At this point, a horn sounded outside as and the live screen
for the entrance showed the ambulance had arrived.
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