The Mallard Hotel

The Mallard Hotel is an upscale Orchard Square hotel whose ornate, carefully staged interior becomes the setting for Mike Hoolihan’s encounter with Arn Debs during the investigation involving Jennifer Rockwell. Its room of carved decoys gives the place a distinctive identity, while its Decoy Room serves as a practical meeting point where the hotel’s polished atmosphere meets the blunt pressures of police work.

Setting and Character

The hotel is described as the best in town, or at least as an establishment convinced of its own distinction. It occupies a stone mansion in Orchard Square and has recently been refurbished. Inside, wooden panels and corporate gloom are combined with what Mike sees as a high-tech shrine to Great Britain: the setting draws on conspicuous ideas of English refinement while presenting them in a newly updated, commercial form.

The hotel’s defining decoration is its abundance of ducks. Prints, models, lures, and small carved figures fill the rooms; these last objects are decoys whose value comes not from practical use but from rarity, with some selling for tens of thousands of dollars. Their carefully cultivated status turns the hotel’s name into an interior motif as well as a label. In a location that will host police inquiries, the repeated image of the decoy offers an apt visual echo, without itself identifying any particular clue or deception.

Mike Hoolihan’s Use of the Hotel

Mike knows the Mallard and is drawn to its atmosphere enough to accept the high price of its cocktails. His fondness extends both to the twenty-dollar drink and, by contrast, the twenty-cent one; what matters at the hotel is the surroundings that justify the expense. He associates it with a double Johnny Black, elegant surroundings, and a pianist slumped over the baby grand. Yet the hotel is not where he chooses to drink when he is seriously intoxicated: for a prolonged drinking run he prefers cheaper dives, including York’s or Dree-ley’s on Division and a string of bars on Battery. That distinction makes the Mallard a place of chosen indulgence rather than a setting for his heaviest drinking.

When he arrives to meet Debs, Mike gets there early and brings material from Tony Silvera about the man. He orders a Virgin Mary with extra spice and settles into the Decoy Room to wait. The location thus begins as a controlled meeting place: Mike has prepared information, is sober enough to observe, and is watching for the person he expects to arrive.

The Decoy Room Encounter

The room is busy when Mike enters, but the crowd thins as eight o’clock passes. He realizes that Debs has been in the room all along, sitting at the near end of the bar; Mike had watched him without at first imagining a connection between the large, red-haired man and Jennifer. The delay in recognizing the significance of the person already present turns the public bar into a scene of surveillance and belated attention.

Debs initially sticks to beer, then switches to scotch around eight fifteen. As the wait grows, he becomes louder and more contemptuous toward the waitresses, and monopolizes the bartender with questions about his sexual prowess. Mike waits until the bartender finds an excuse to go into the back, then crosses the room and identifies himself as the law by opening his jacket to show his badge. He asks whether Debs is there to meet Jennifer and tells him she is dead. The exchange changes the room from a place of waiting and observation into the site of a direct police approach; Mike raises his palms in a calming gesture and proposes that they sit in a corner and talk.

Later Investigative Use

The Decoy Room returns as a rendezvous in Mike’s subsequent work. He calls state cutter Paulie No and asks him to meet that evening at six in the same room at the Mallard. The hotel therefore is not only the setting for the encounter with Debs: it remains part of Mike’s working geography as he arranges further conversations. Its atmosphere of expensive leisure and its practical use for police meetings coexist, giving the location a double function without making it an official police space.