Or maybe he’d recon the neighborhood while Taylor got her beauty sleep. Whenever he was alone and unarmed, interesting things seemed to happen to him.
CHAPTER 12
Brodie and Taylor took a cab to the Art Hotel, a gray stucco building on a tree-lined street along the south side of Körnerpark. As they got out of the cab Brodie noticed that a Berlin Police officer was still stationed at the southern entrance to the park, though the yellow crime scene tape had been removed.
They made their way through the glass doors of the hotel into a small reception area. The hardwood floors looked clean and there were no signs of peeling paint, or flickering bulbs, or skittering rats. So far, so good.
They approached the reception desk, a big beechwood counter with the wordsART HOTELbolted to the front. A few canvases of abstract art hung on the white walls. There was no one behind the desk.
Brodie rang a bell on the counter, and in a moment a door in the back opened and a slender man in his seventies shuffled out. He had a dusky complexion and bushy gray eyebrows, and wore a white button-down linen shirt and khakis.
The man smiled. “Willkommen. Deutsch? Englisch?”
“English,” said Taylor.
“Very good. My name is Mustafa. Welcome to the Art Hotel.”
“Thank you,” said Taylor. “We have two single rooms booked under Magnolia Taylor.” She put her passport on the counter, as did Brodie.
Mustafa glanced at both passports, then clacked away at a desktop computer in front of him. “Yes, I see. Six nights.”
Taylor said, “With an option to extend.”
Mustafa smiled. “There is always an option to extend a visit. Alas, not so with life.”
Great, Brodie thought, a philosopher check-in clerk. He said to Mustafa, “In life, there is no charge for an early checkout. How about here?”
Mustafa assured him, “No charge.” He added with a smile, “A small fee.”
Taylor interrupted the path toward enlightenment and said, “We requested adjacent rooms.”
“Yes, miss. And I use the card on file for additional charges?”
“Yes. And I believe you are holding our bags.”
He nodded, turned around, and shouted something in another language. It didn’t sound like Arabic to Brodie’s ears. Probably Turkish.
In a moment the door swung open and a skinny, sullen teenager—possibly Mustafa’s grandson who’d been roped into the family business—walked out pulling Brodie’s and Taylor’s roller bags and brought them around the counter.
The boy looked between Brodie and Taylor and mumbled something in German.
“English!” barked Mustafa.
The kid flinched, then said, “I hope you enjoy your stay.”
Taylor smiled. “Danke schön.”
The kid returned to the back room as Mustafa took two keycards out of a drawer and input something on the computer.
Brodie gestured to the abstract canvas hanging behind him. “Nice art.”
Mustafa turned to see what he was pointing to. “Yes? You like?” He didn’t seem so sure about it himself.
“Bold color choices.”
“A hundred fifty euros if you want.”
“It looks perfect where it is.”
