A Key to the Suite Read Free Page B

in any way. It could hurt me and it could hurt you. Once in Atlanta, at a NAPATAN regional convention, one of Federal’s road men helping out in the suite goosed the wife of the executive vice-president down from New York. Federal cleaned out that whole regional organization.”
    “No goosing. Got ya!”
    “Dammit, Bobby, if you’re not going to take this seriously …”
    “I’m taking it seriously, honest, Fred.”
    Frick sighed. “Okay. What I was saying, if one of our boys gets plotzed, we run him off the team fast before any damage is done. Another problem, the guy who has hit too many suites and is a drunk nuisance by the time he gets to ours. Check the badge. If he’s brass, all you can do is handle it the best way you know how. Maybe he’s a lousy road man from some other outfit. Then move him out, firm and fast. Send him along. Tell him they got broads at the Federal suite, or at United. Let the competition worry about him. Which brings up a new problem. Broads. I got a bedroom set aside for you boys working thesuite, and there’s no real need for more than two of us to be in the suite at the same time. If you get something lined up, okay. So long as you handle it with good taste. Don’t bring broads into the suite. And don’t let anybody get so carried away, he can’t take his turn in the suite. This is a case of just using horse sense.”
    “I understand.”
    Frick studied his notebook intently for a few moments, then put it back in his pocket. “Now you go check when we can get the suite, and I’ll go see how Tommy’s coming with the exhibit.”
    The Sultana had been planned and constructed as a resort-convention hotel, and the huge convention hall was a separate structure, joined to it by an umbilical corridor eighty feet wide and over two hundred feet long. This corridor was adjacent to the Arabian Room, the main dining room of the hotel. When no convention was in progress, or when the convention hall was being used as a sports arena, the corridor could be blocked off by an intricate accordion-door system. When a convention was in progress, the corridor formed an ideal place for exhibits. The lighting, electric outlets, floor covering—had all been planned with this use in mind.
    Most of the exhibits were up, and a hundred people were adding the finishing touches. Many of them had a look of total exhaustion. The deadline for removal of the APETOD exhibits had been ten o’clock the previous evening, and many of the people had worked straight through.
    Fred Frick walked swiftly through the noises and confusions to the AGM exhibit. Tommy Carmer was opening cartons of color press literature and stacking them on a narrow table justinside the blue velvet rope. A pair of pretty twin blondes in tight plaid pants and sheer blouses watched him with a marked lack of interest. A man in coveralls was sitting on the floor working on a small electric motor. Carmer was a sallow man with a hollow chest, a great naked dome of forehead, and very little chin.
    “How’s it look to you, Freddy?”
    “Goddam, it looks great! For once we don’t get stuck over in a corner someplace. What’s he doing?”
    “Oh, that’s the motor that makes the parts move in the big cutaway display. It quit a minute after I turned it on.”
    “Can he fix it?”
    “He says so.”
    Frick turned toward the blondes. “How are you today, girls? Ready to go?”
    One shrugged. The other one said listlessly, “Any time.” They had show girl figures rather than model figures. They looked sulky and bored.
    “Which is Honey and which is Bunny?” Frick asked.
    “I’m Honey, with the mole,” one of them said, and touched her cheek.
    “You going to dog it, girls, or you going to give it the paz-zazz?”
    “You’ll get what you’re paying for,” Bunny said. “You got any beef, you call the agency, okay?”
    “Let’s hear the spiel, girls.”
    They shrugged simultaneously, moved into position. The sudden change in them was