Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

it, a fire?” I let my voice rise. “My husband’s in there.”
    “No, ma’am, it’s not a fire.”
    “But my husband!” I wailed.
    The guard didn’t answer, just stood there impassively. That made me mad. In truth, there was no real reason I had to go in, but I was getting caught up in the excitement, so caught up I’d already compromised my principles by lying and hadn’t even realized it, hadn’t even stopped to consider the ethics of the situation. I tried to push past, still doing my imitation of a terrified wife. The guard grabbed my arm. “Ma’am, you can’t go in there now.”
    “I’ve got to.” I tried to jerk my arm away, but he held on. To my horror, I saw that I was beginning to draw a crowd, and I could also hear sirens getting close. If I didn’t get in now, I probably wasn’t going to. Should I retreat?
    And then I heard a male voice say, “The lady’s with me.” It was Pete Brainard of the
Chronicle
, evidently the photographer they’d sent to meet Rob. He was flashing his press card.
    “Let’s see her press card.”
    “She’s not a reporter. She’s my assistant.” Pete took his heavy camera bag off his shoulder and put it on mine. “Here, Rebecca, take this will you?”
    “We can’t let her in without a press card.”
    “Dammit, she’s with me!” The guard had relaxed his grip on my arm, and now Pete grabbed me every bit as roughly, and whisked me past the rent-a-cop.
    “Goddamn newshawks!” the guard said, giving up the fight. It made me giggle. “Newshawk” was what my mother called Rob when she wanted to be particularly insulting. There was no one quite so arrogant as a newshawk on a story, be he or she reporter or photographer. If I thought I had a right to be in that hotel, I was probably catching the disease myself. No doubt Mom would be disappointed in me, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
    The lobby was nearly deserted, the elevators being around a corner and down a corridor. We ran toward them, me weighed down by Pete’s heavy camera case. In the distance, we could see a crowd. Up close it proved to be not a dense one, but a milling one, again kept at bay by the hotel’s security staff. Rob was at the front.
    He was pale. Looking past the line of guards, I could see why. More than a dozen men and women were lying on the floor, some moaning, some lying still, as maids, bellmen, and hotel executives raced back and forth with blankets and first-aid supplies. I started to feel as if I shouldn’t have come.
    As Pete and I reached Rob, we heard a commotion behind us, and the crowd parted, the line of guards parted, to let the first medics through. Pete went into frantic action, snapping the overall scene, the carnage on the floor, the faces of the paramedics, the faces of the victims. He couldn’t yet get close enough to get to the fallen elevator itself, but I knew he’d stay there until he could, even though as the first photographer on the scene, he was bound to have the best pictures.
    Rob was simply watching, scribbling on his notepad, not bothering anyone. I supposed he’d already talked to hotel personnel and witnesses, and he’d talk to more later, but at the moment he was a witness himself. I felt profoundly depressed; the breathless excitement had passed and I was watching something that resembled one of the more frenetic war-is-hell scenes from M*A*S*H. I wondered what the hell I was doing there.
    “Rebecca, give me a long lens, dammit!”
    I fumbled in Pete’s bag, found the lens, and promptly dropped it. I thanked my stars the floor was carpeted, but when I bent down to pick it up, I bumped someone who was thrown off-balance and who accidentally kicked it just past one of the guards. I was going to ask him to hand it back, but Pete pushed past me, reaching for it. The guard grabbed him and pushed him back, hard. The crowd fell back in a shudder, but they were mostly well behaved. Which was more than I could say for Pete, who shouted, “Stupid asshole!”
    “Who’re you calling asshole?” The guard doubled up his fist.
    “I’m from the
Chronicle
.”
    “I don’t care if you’re from the
New York Times
, you’re out of line.”
    “Goddamn jerks got no respect for the press.” Pete was only mumbling now, having better sense than to provoke fisticuffs, but still obsessed with the one thing on his mind:
“This is a news story and I am currently God.”
    I was starting to feel my old revulsion for my boyfriend’s job, but