Read Online Sleep Tight by Jeffrey Jacobson - Free Book Online Page A

brand new!” Mr. Ullman was starting to take the infestation personally.
    The Serenity was Chicago’s latest luxury hotel, inhabiting an entire city block, stretching from Washington to the south to Randolph on the North Side, and Dearborn to State, west to east. Much of the space near the streets had been carefully landscaped, layered with reflection pools and birch trees. The building itself was triangle shaped, both in footprint and profile. It rose one hundred and thirty-four floors above the city, culminating in a great sweeping point at the top. The leading edge of the building faced the lake, flanked on both sides by curving slabs of gray windows. The locals had immediately dubbed it “The Fin,” as in a shark’s dorsal fin, to the dismay of the owners and Mr. Ullman.
    Mr. Ullman kept trying to get the exterminator to understand the true significance of the hotel. “We have been in the news practically every day for weeks now. It has all been carefully orchestrated, I can assure you. Surely, you heard about the charity ball last night? Everyone in town was here.”
    Roger considered this. He spread his hands apart in a helpless gesture. “If this building is so new, then why would it have so many bugs?”
    Mr. Ullman licked his lips, then pressed them together so tightly they almost disappeared. He did not want to discuss the matter. “I think you will understand our need for discretion. We had a . . . situation, where we discovered that a group of homeless people had been hiding in the unfinished sections near the roof, and using these rooms to sleep in at night. We scrubbed and fumigated everything, of course.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œI can only assume . . .” Mr. Ullman gestured helplessly. They contemplated the room in silence, until finally Roger felt compelled to say something, anything. “Yes, well. The problem is that once they are established, it can be very difficult to eradicate them. The females lay an average of up to five eggs per day when they’ve had a good meal. That’s over two hundred eggs in their lifetime. And the babies are ravenous. That’s what I’m assuming we have here. Bedbugs molt five times before reaching adulthood. That’s why I’m finding so many exoskeletons.”
    Roger slid the entire bed away from the wall and shined his light behind the headboard. “Aha! Here we go.” He produced a pair of tweezers and held it up for the manager. Up close, it wasn’t exactly menacing. The little bug was about the size of an apple seed. Six feeble legs waved about helplessly.
    â€œYes, yes,” Mr. Ullman said. “Fine. But now what do we do?”
    Roger dropped the bug in a specimen vial and secured it in the chest pocket of his uniform. “To be absolutely sure, I would recommend clearing out every piece of furniture in these rooms and destroying them. Start over. At the very least, dispose of all the mattresses, the couches, the easy chairs. Anything with padding and fabric.”
    Mr. Ullman was aghast. “Are you joking? Do you have any idea of what this couch cost? More than your annual salary, I’m guessing. That chair? Hand built in Italy. The mattress alone cost over fourteen thousand dollars for God’s sake. Are you seriously saying there is no chemical that we can use to kill these things?”
    Roger shook his head. “The amount you’d have to use would destroy the furniture. Heat can kill these things, but again, you’d risk ruining the furniture.” He thought for a moment. “Bedbugs can live up to a year without eating. But they have very weak jaws. They’re just tubes, really, one for injecting you with their saliva, which contains both an anesthetic and an anticoagulant, and the second one sucks out your blood. Fascinating stuff, really when you—”
    â€œI’m sure it is. You were saying.”
    â€œWell, they can’t chew