The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

dressed for a day out at the races: a flowery shirt, a gold chain with the Moroccan star which heaved up and down with his snores, gold rings on his fingers, heavy dark sunglasses hiding his eyes.
    I looked around. Old Moroccan furnishings – all heavy wood. Once-luxuriant brushed velvet upholstery – now dust-ridden and showing serious signs of neglect. There was a loud 1920s railway-station clock hanging next to the reception area: a clock which counted off each passing second with an ominous click. And there was a half-starved cat on top of the reception counter, eyeing us warily: intruders, outsiders, here to disturb the soporific order of things.
    As we approached the counter where the old man was asleep, Paul took the initiative, whispering ‘
Monsieur
’, then raising his voice several decibels with each additional rendition of ‘
Monsieur
’. When this proved pointless I tapped the hotel bell near the open guest register. Its loud clang jolted him back to life, the shock on his face coupled with bemusement, as if he didn’t know where he was. As he tried to adjust his gaze Paul said:
    â€˜Sorry to have woken you so abruptly. But we did try . . .’
    â€˜You have a reservation?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Name?’
    Paul gave him this information. The man stood up and, using the index finger on each hand, spun the register around towards him. He peered at today’s page, then rifled back through several more, shaking his head, muttering to himself.
    â€˜You have no reservation,’ he finally said.
    â€˜But I made one,’ Paul said.
    â€˜You received confirmation from us?’
    â€˜Of course. I made it on the Internet.’
    â€˜You have a copy of the confirmation?’
    Paul looked sheepish. ‘Forgot to print it,’ he whispered to me.
    â€˜Surely if you went online,’ I said, ‘you’d find it.’
    â€˜I think I deleted it.’
    I stopped myself from saying: ‘Not again.’ Paul was always clearing out old mail and frequently removed essential correspondences.
    â€˜But you still have rooms?’ I asked the guy behind the desk.
    â€˜Yes and no.’
    He now picked up an ancient house phone – of the sort that seemed to belong in some movie set during the German occupation – and started speaking Arabic in a loud, fractious voice. This was something I was beginning to notice: how Arabic was often a language declaimed in a stentorian manner, making it seem aggressive, swaggering, bordering on the hostile. It reminded me that I should really resuscitate my still-reasonable, if rusty, French while here; something I’d been promising myself to do ever since leaving Montreal behind.
    The desk clerk finished his conversation. Turning back to us he said:
    â€˜My colleague, he gets the owner now.’
    We had to wait ten minutes for the arrival of the man in charge. His name was Monsieur Picard. He was French, in his mid-fifties, short, fit, dressed in a crisp white shirt and tan trousers, formal, chilly; his face reflecting, I sensed, a lifetime of enforced diffidence and the dodging of emotion.
    â€˜There seems to be a problem?’ he asked, his tone borderline supercilious.
    â€˜We booked a room, but you don’t seem to have a record of it,’ Paul said.
    â€˜Do you have the confirmation?’ Monsieur Picard asked.
    Paul shook his head.
    â€˜Nor do we. So a reservation mustn’t have been made.’
    â€˜But I made the reservation . . .’ Paul said.
    â€˜Clearly not.’
    â€˜Well, you do have rooms, yes?’ I asked.
    â€˜Has not Ahmed here told you that we have just one room free?’
    â€˜And how much does that cost?’
    â€˜It is a room with a balcony and a sea view. And you will need it for how long?’
    â€˜A month,’ Paul said. ‘That’s what we booked it for.’
    Monsieur Picard pursed his lips, then turned to Ahmed. He directed him in