[Leica] another Madoff victim?

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

> it looks so freaky clean
> very sad

In 1994 I was staying at the Marriott Marquis hotel (Times Square) in 
Manhattan. It has a vast atrium in the middle, 45 stories high, and all of 
the walkways have balconies that overlook the atrium. It is tiered; the top 
10 (or so) floors are smaller than the next group, and so forth. I think the 
reason for this tiered construction is to allow people on the 45th floor to 
see some of the lower floors as they look down. It probably prevents some 
fear-of-heights reactions.

I can't recall exactly what floor I was on. Probably about 16th. It was the 
top floor of its tier; the next floor up was a bit narrower, so you could 
(say) drop a ball from the 17th floor and it would land on the 16th rather 
than in the atrium.

I was there with my colleague Paul. We had just returned to our rooms after 
dinner with some client, and were starting to unwind when there was a 
massive THUMP outside the door. We looked. A person had jumped from an upper 
floor and his mangled dead body was splayed out on the rug just outside the 
door to Paul's room. Ours was the top floor of our tier; that's where 
jumpers would land. It is astonishing how rapidly the hotel security people 
got there and got police there.

It didn't seem right to take a picture, or even to stay and gawk, so we went 
downstairs to the bar. But we had an early meeting the next morning, so 
after 20 minutes in the bar we went back upstairs. We figured there would be 
some way to get into our rooms.

It was all gone. Not only was the victim removed, but the bloodstained piece 
of the carpet had been cut out and a replacement sewn in its place. It 
looked freaky clean. We had seen a dead person on that spot less than an 
hour before. All of the evidence that it had ever happened was gone. It 
looked so freaky clean. Very sad.