front of an ancient-looking elevator. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and looked around. Flat-screen TVs mounted on the brick walls, all tuned to the same Fox News show. Celebrity mug shots on the walls, too—Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson, Janis Joplin, Eminem, even Bill Gates when he was a teenager. Everyone but my father, it seemed.
Leather couches and banquettes. A very long bar. Lights in the floors. A black iron railing around an atrium three stories high. At night this place was probably impressive, but in the unforgiving light of day it was drab and disappointing, like a magician’s stage props seen up close.
There were a fair number of security cameras, mostly the standard low-profile shiny black domes mounted on the ceiling. A few were camouflaged as spotlights—you could tell because the “bulbs,” actually camera lenses, were a different color. The ones behind the bar were there to discourage employees from pilfering cash or stealing bottles. The cameras in the lounge area were more discreetly concealed, probably because the bar patrons might have gotten uncomfortable if they knew their every embarrassing move was being recorded. Though it occurred to me that closed-circuit cameras worked perfectly with the prison décor.
When I returned to the front desk, a very good-looking dark-haired guy was waiting for me. Classic Arab facial features: olive complexion, dark eyes, a prominent nose. He wore the same Pee-wee Herman suit, but he’d shaved and combed his hair.
He smiled as I approached. “Mr. Heller?”
“Thanks for meeting me, Naji,” I said.
“Mr. Marcus is a very good friend of the Graybar,” he said. “Anything I can do, please, I am at your service.” Marshall Marcus was not just a “friend” of the hotel’s but one of the original, and biggest, investors. He’d called ahead, as I’d asked.
Naji produced an oblong key fob with a BMW logo at the center: the keyless entry fob to Marcus’s four-year-old M3. This was the “junker” he’d given Alexa to drive. Attached to the keychain was a valet ticket stub.
“Her car was left in our underground parking garage. If you wish, I will take you there myself.”
“So she never claimed the car?”
“Apparently not. I made sure no one touched the vehicle, in case you needed to run prints.”
The guy was clearly experienced. “The police might,” I said. “Any idea what time she valeted the car?”
“Of course, sir,” Naji said, and he took out a valet ticket. This was a typical five-part perforated form. The bottom two sections were gone, one presumably handed to Alexa when she’d dropped the car off. Each remaining section was time-stamped 9:37. That was the time Alexa had arrived at the Graybar and given her dad’s BMW to the valet.
“I’d like to look at the surveillance video,” I said.
“In the parking garage, do you mean? Or at the valet station?”
“Everywhere,” I said.
* * *
THE GRAYBAR’S security command center was a small room in the business offices in the back. It was outfitted with twenty or so wall-mounted monitors showing views of the exterior, the lobby, the kitchen, the halls outside the restrooms. A chunky guy with a goatee was sitting there, watching the screens. Actually, he was reading the Boston Herald, but he hastily put it down when Naji entered.
“Leo,” Naji said, “can you pull up last night’s video feeds from cameras three through five?”
Naji and I stood behind Leo as he clicked a mouse and opened several windows on a computer screen.
“Start from around nine thirty,” I said.
There seemed to be at least three cameras positioned in the valet area in front of the hotel. The video footage was digital and sharp. As Leo advanced the frames at double and triple speed, the cars pulled up faster and faster. Guests zipped out of their cars at a Keystone Kops pace, touching their hair, patting their jackets. At nine thirty-five a black BMW parked and Alexa got out.
The valet handed her a ticket, and Alexa joined a long line waiting to get into the lobby as the valet drove off with her car.
“Can we zoom in?” I said.
I often enjoy looking at surveillance video. It’s like being in an episode of CSI. Unfortunately, in real life, when you enlarge part of a video on a computer monitor, you don’t hear any whooshing sounds or high-pitched beeping.
On TV and in the movies, all techies have an amazing ability to zoom in on a fuzzy image and magically sharpen it using some mythical digital enhancement “algorithm” so they can