A Smell like Mildew and Metal

Dear story snacker,

I grew up on audiobooks almost as much as books with pages. I listened endlessly to books first on cassette tapes, then on to CDs, then to the audiobooks of today.

My childhood is indelibly associated with the sound of Jim Dale reading Harry Potter, Brian Jacques reading Redwall, John R. Erikson reading Hank the Cowdog, and so many more!

Did you listen to books as a child? What was one of your favorite books and its performer? Let me know in a reply email.

Listening to books made me love reading even more, and I’ve always wondered if I could do justice to a story if I tried performing it myself…

What better way to try it than with some of my own work!

STORY SNACK

DEATH AND BOTTLE CAPS

Part 5

Part 1, 2, 3, and 4

Across the street from the Seaside Hotel, Romulus listened to the rain drum on the awning of the out-of-business deli he stood beneath. The drizzle had swelled into a squall that lashed the empty streets with a muted roar of raindrops. Lead-lined storm clouds cast the mid-afternoon into semi-darkness. Behind the hotel he was preparing to enter, Romulus could see the city’s docks being battered by waves that denied the peaceable reputation of the Pacific Ocean, a jumble of boats and masts pitching and swaying in the blow.

The hotel itself was a large, featureless glass and concrete building that exhaled creature comforts and anonymity. It no doubt had an auditorium to rent for your corporate meeting, and rooms to rent for you and your prostitute, depending on your monetary inclination.

And like most hotels, it certainly had a strict policy about giving out information about its guests. 

Romulus took out his cellphone and dialed a number, putting the phone to his ear as it rang.

The person on the other end picked up after two rings. “Yes,” Romulus said in answer to a tinny question. “Seaside Hotel. As soon as you can. Good.”

Hanging up, the detective pocketed the phone, then grimaced as he reached up and disarranged his sleek gray hair with a vigorous hand motion. He then turned his jacket collar inside out and staggered out into the rain. He stumbled across the wet pavement and through the automatic doors of the Seaside Hotel, blinking as the bright fluorescent light hit him.

The starkly furnished lobby was empty save for a pockmarked twenty-something sitting behind the reception desk so absorbed in his phone that he did not notice Romulus until the detective staggered up to the sleek black desk and began ringing the service bell continuously.

“’Scuse me sonny! Can you help me there? I sure hope so! Terrible weather we’re having, ain’t it? Wouldn’t’a come out in this if it weren’t so urgent! Urgent business indeed!”

Romulus’ voice had become high, cracked and two thirds senile. Combined with his disarranged hair and disarranged suit jacket he exactly resembled any hospitality worker’s worst nightmare: a confused yet entitled pensioner.

The young man jolted upright, eyes wide, the razor-witted social commentary he was forming on Instagram dying in utero as he dropped his phone.

“Er—can I help you—” began the boy, but his attempt at a two-way conversation was immediately steamrolled.

“Yes, you can, sonny!” ejaculated Romulus, slapping the desktop and waving a finger. “My grandson is staying here and I’ve come to meet him—my phone isn’t working so you’ll have to tell me what room he’s staying in!”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t give out—” the clerk made another valiant attempt to be heard, but was crushed again.

“Nonsense! Total nonsense! William flew here to see me and a phone dying won’t get in the way of that, do you hear? If you’re going to be difficult, sonny, go get the manager and maybe he can show some hospitality!”

Looking extremely relieved, the boy nodded, turning to the door behind him. “I’ll get some out to you right away, sir,” he threw over his shoulder before escaping into what looked like a small office and slamming the door behind him.

Romulus straightened his coat and ran a hand through his hair to fix a little of the self-inflicted damage. He looked around the empty lobby once, then moved behind the desk and used the open computer’s mouse to quickly find the list of occupied rooms.

After one scroll down he found what he wanted: Room 221. Guest: McVale, Henry.

Taking the elevator, Romulus stepped out onto a blue-and-green carpeted hallway hung with prints of ocean visions contrasting sadly with the stormy grayness monopolizing the view through the windows.

He moved quickly down the hall until he reached the door of room 221. He stopped two steps short of the door, a cold tingle buzzing down his spine. A Do Not Disturb sign dangled from the door handle, but the door itself hung open. The sign barely held onto the handle, as if someone had jammed it on in haste.

Hand half inside his jacket, Romulus moved silently forward, pushing the door far enough open with his fingertips that he could slide inside. An unpleasant odor hit him, part mildew, part metal.

The place was dark, its air still and stagnant. A memory from half his life ago returned to Romulus; pushing through thick underbrush, uniform wet with sweat and jungle moisture, searching for an enemy he never saw.

With a grimace, Romulus flicked the light switch by the door with his elbow. Jaundiced light illuminated an empty bathroom to his left where towels hung untouched. The curtains were drawn on the far side of the main room, two queen beds crouched beside each other. One bed looked pristine and unslept in, the other was missing its duvet, pillows and sheets spilled onto the carpet like bloodless intestines.

As he moved forward into the bedroom, Romulus realized he’d unconsciously drawn his revolver. But the place was empty. In a manner of speaking. The source of the smell pervading the place lay between the beds.

“Damn,” whispered the old man, sheathing his gun and looking down at the broad black stain that had soaked into the cheap carpet. Still fresh enough to stink, but old enough to look more like spilt Coke than Henry McVale’s blood.

As he began to reach for his phone, Romulus heard a whisper behind him; the door’s edge sliding over carpet. His hand changed directions as he twisted around, closing over his revolver’s grip even as he saw a figure in a balaclava leap across the room and swing something blunt and black towards his head.

Agony exploded through his skull as the blackjack struck home, white light flared behind his eyes. His gun fell from nerveless fingers, and Romulus collapsed into darkness. 

*

Romulus woke with a single black eye staring at him. The barrel of his own gun.

Pain traced the inside of his skull like static lightning in a cloud, but the old man forced himself to focus on his surroundings, taking in his present, none-too-ideal situation.

He sat on the floor of the hotel room, propped against the edge coverless bed facing the curtained window. His hands hadn’t been tied, but the throbbing in his head and the room’s new occupants made him wary of sudden movements.

A young man wearing a baseball cap and a self-satisfied smirk leaned against the window curtains. He held a blackjack and a balaclava. The fact that Romulus’ attacker had taken off his face covering did not make the detective feel any safer.

Romulus spared the young man an Antarctic glance, which made the boy grin a wide, humorless grin. A feral dog snarling at a cornered wolf.

The dog’s master sat in front of Romulus in a rickety swivel chair rolled from the room’s balsa desk. Long-limbed and swarthy with high cheekbones and stylishly unruly black hair, the man pointing the detective’s gun at his face lounged in the chair as if he did this so often it had become tedious.

However, below his unusually long lashes, the man’s eyes were black and empty as a shark who’s honed in on its prey.

“Mr. Zino,” Romulus rasped, leaning his head back to rest against the mattress. “Good of you to come to me. This makes things simpler, if a little more painful…” He grimaced as a nauseating lance of pain shot behind his ear from the throbbing spot on the side of his head where he had been sapped.

“Sei divertente,” Anton Zino said, his voice rich and sardonic, like badly kept wine turned to vinegar. The capo leaned forward slightly, shaking Romulus’ revolver at him. “You know my name, but I do not know yours…all I know is you have poked your big nose and little brain where neither should be. Which mean now I have to kill you.”

Romulus closed his eyes, shaking his head gingerly. “I’d prefer if you didn’t. I have a very important meeting tonight that I just can’t miss. I suggest you give me back my gun and turn yourself and your puppy over there over to the police. You’re already facing charges for the murder of Henry McVale and accessory to battery of me. Don’t make things worse for yourself, son.”

With a hiss of anger, the blackjack wielder stepped toward the detective, but Zino forestalled him with a raised hand. With the other, the Italian poked Romulus in the forehead with the gray barrel of his gun. The detective’s eyebrows knitted with pain as he stared into Zino’s black eyes.

“Say a prayer, vecchio,” the mobster hissed, thumbing back the hammer with a soft klik. “Don’t worry, I won’t send you to hell alone. I’ll be sending that dirty puttana who hired you with you once I find her. She’s too stupid to live thinking she can pull one over on me.”

He jerked his head at his lackey. “Toss me a pillow, I want this to be quiet.”

As the boy stepped toward the bed, Romulus’ phone buzzed in his pocket. With a curt nod, the detective gathered his legs beneath him and began to rise, rasping, “There’s no talking you young thugs out of being stupid…”

“Idiota!” snarled Zino, sending his chair flying and thrusting the revolver forward.

He pulled the trigger.

Hoo-hoo-hooooo! I can barely wait for next time, the FINALE of Death and Bottle Caps!

Let me know what you thought of Part 5, not to mention my sliver of an audiobook excerpt!

See you next story,

-Zossima