The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

by Clare, Cassandra

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  Late September, 1929

  Magnus spotted the little vamp vampire right away. She was winding her way through the crowd, pausing for a moment for a quick shimmy by the band. She had perfectly bobbed hair, shiny black with a straight bang, just like Louise Brooks. She wore an electric-blue dress with delicate, dripping beadwork that skimmed her knees.

  In most ways, she looked exactly like a normal customer at Magnus’s speakeasy, and she easily blended in with the three or four dozen people who packed onto his small dance floor. But there was something separate about her, something dreamy and strange. The music was fast, but she danced at a sultry middle pace. Her skin was stark white, but not the dusty white from cosmetic powder. And as she did her lonely little snake dance right in front of the saxophone player, she turned herself and made direct eye contact with Magnus. When she did so, two little half fangs appeared against a bright red lip. Realizing they were out, she giggled and clapped a hand to her mouth. A moment later, they had retracted.

  Meanwhile, Alfie, who was by now clinging to the bar for support, forged on with a story.

  “I tole him . . . Magnus, you listenin’?”

  “Of course, Alfie,” Magnus said. Alfie was a very handsome and entertaining regular with excellent taste in suits and a love of strong cocktails. He told very good stories and smiled very good smiles. He was a banker or something. Stockbroker maybe. Everyone had something to do with money these days.

  “. . . I tole him, you can’t take a boat up to your hotel room. And he said, ‘’Course I can. I’m a captain!’ I said, I said to him, I said—”

  “One moment, Alfie. Something I need to attend to.”

  “I’m just gettin’ to the bes’ part. . . .”

  “Just one moment,” Magnus said again, patting his friend’s arm. “I’ll be right back.”

  Alfie followed the track of Magnus’s gaze and arrived at the girl.

  “Now that’s a tasty tomato,” he said, nodding. “But I didn’t think that was your taste.”

  “My tastes are universal,” Magnus replied with a smile.

  “Well, getta wiggle on. She won’t be here all night. I’ll watcha bar for you.” Alfie slapped the bar. “You can trust me.”

  Magnus nodded to Max, his excellent bartender, and Max immediately made another South Side for Alfie. “To keep your whistle wet while I’m gone.”

  “Ver’ kind,” Alfie said, nodding. “You’re an egg, Dry.”

  Magnus called his bar Mr. Dry’s. America was technically now all “dry,” alcohol being illegal everywhere. But the truth was, most places were “wet”—awash with the stuff. New York especially. Everyone in New York drank, and the fact that they now did so illegally only made it better. The speakeasy, as far as Magnus was concerned, was one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Intimate, celebratory, illegal without being immoral—a frisson of danger without any real peril.

  Mr. Dry’s was not a large place—speakeasies rarely were. By nature, they were secret. His was concealed behind the facade of a wig store on West 25th Street. To get in, you needed to say the password to his very efficient doorman, who viewed the prospective guest through a small slit panel in a reinforced door in the back wall of the shop. Once inside, you squeezed through a narrow hallway and entered Magnus’s proud domain—ten tables and a marble bar (imported from Paris) backed by a mahogany display of every elusive bottle of things exotic Magnus had been able to get his hands on.

  Most of the space went to his stage and dance floor. It pulsated under the pounding of dancing feet. In the morning, it would be cleaned and waxed, and the scuff marks of a thousand blows of dance shoes would be wiped away. He gently slipped through the dancers, most so intense and inebriated that they were unaware he was there. He enjoyed the soft (and occasionally not so soft) pummeling of flying limbs and kicking heels. He enjoyed feeling the body heat and being carried by the movement and the surge of the dancers as they more or less became one solid, pulsating mass.

  The little vampire was young—no more than sixteen—and she only came up to Magnus’s chest height. He leaned down and spoke into her ear.

  “Perhaps I can buy you a drink?” he said. “A private one? In the back?”

  The tips of the fangs popped out again when she smiled.

  Magnus already felt somewhat reassured—the half-fanged smile probably wasn’t from hunger. Drunkenness could cause fangs to poke out a bit. But vampires, like mundanes, often sought after salty foods and amorous encounters when inebriated.

  “This way,” he said, pushing back a curtain and revealing a short hallway leading to a single door. Right behind the main club, Magnus had constructed a small and intensely private room with a zinc bar. This room was lined in large stained-glass panels, illuminated from behind with electric lights, portraying Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. This was where he kept the very best and the very worst of his stock, and this was where he conducted his most private business.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met before,” he said as she plopped happily onto a bar stool and spun around.

  “Oh, I know who you are. You’re Magnus Bane.”

  She had one of those New York accents that Magnus was still getting used to, even though he had been here for several months. It was brassy and big, like a blinking neon sign. Her kid-leather dancing shoes had scuffed toes, and there was a mud stain halfway up the base of the heel, plus flecks of other substances that Magnus didn’t want to know anything about. These were shoes for dancing and shoes for hunting.

  “And what may I call you?”

  “Call me Dolly,” she said.

  Magnus pulled a bottle of cold champagne out of the large tub of ice that contained at least sixty identical bottles.

  “I like this place,” Dolly said. “It’s got class.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “Lotsa places are classy,” Dolly said, reaching into a jar on the bar and helping herself to some maraschino cherries, plucking them up with her long (and probably dirty) fingernails. “But they’re fake classy, you know? This seems real classy. You got good wine. Like that stuff.”

  She indicated the cut-rate champagne Magnus was holding and pouring into a glass for her. The bottle, like the others in the tub, was certainly nice, but they’d all been filled with fizzed-up cheap wine and cunningly recorked. Vampires could drink quite a lot and could be expensive to have around, and he felt certain she would not be able to tell the difference. He was right. She drained half the glass in the first sip and held it out for a top-up.

  “Well, Dolly,” Magnus said, refilling her glass, “I certainly don’t care what you get up to on the street or anywhere else, but I do like my clientele. I consider it a matter of good service to make sure vampires don’t eat them under my roof.”

  “I didn’t come here to eat,” she said. “We go down to the Bowery for that. I was told to come down here and ask about you.”

  The shoes did bear out the Bowery story. Those downtown streets could be filthy.

  “Oh? And who is so kind as to inquire about little me?”

  “Nobody,” the girl said.

  “Nobody,” Magnus said, “is one of my favorite names.”

  This caused the vampire girl to giggle and spin on her stool
. She drained off the glass and held it out for more. Magnus refilled it once again.

  “My friend . . .”

  “Nobody.”

  “Nobody, yeah. I just met h—this person, but this person is one of mine, ya know?”

  “A vampire.”

  “Right. Anyways, they want to tell you something,” she said. “They said you gotta get out of New York.”

  “Oh really? And why is that?”

  In reply, she giggled and half slid, half fell from the stool and broke into a shuffling and drunken private Charleston to the music that came pounding through the wall.

  “See,” she said, as she did her little dance, “things are about to get dangerous. Something about the mundie money and how it’s an omen. See, it’s all going to break, or something. All the money. And when it does, it means that the world is going to end. . . .”

  Magnus sighed internally.

  The New York Downworld was one of the most ridiculous places he had ever been, which was partly the reason he now spent his time serving illegal alcohol to mundanes. And still, he couldn’t avoid this nonsense. People came to bars to talk, and so did Downworlders. The werewolves were paranoid. The vampires were gossips. Everyone had a story. Something was always about to happen, something big. It was just part of the mood of the time. The mundanes were making absurd amounts of money on Wall Street and spending it on fripperies and moving pictures and booze. These were things Magnus could respect. But the Downworld dealt in half-baked omens and pointless rivalries. Clans were fighting one another for control of small, inconsequential patches of ground. The fey kept to themselves as ever, occasionally snatching the stray human from outside the Central Park Casino and luring them down to their world with the promise of a party they would never forget.

  At least a pretty flapper vampire talking nonsense was better than a slobbering drunk werewolf. Magnus nodded as if listening and mentally counted the bottles of brandy and rum in the storage shelves below the bar.

  “These mundies, see, they’re trying to raise a demon. . . .”

  “Mundanes do that all too frequently,” Magnus said, moving a misplaced bottle of gold rum that had been put in with the spiced. “Right now, they also enjoy sitting on the top of flagpoles and walking on the wings of airborne biplanes. This is the age of stupid hobbies.”

  “Well, these mundies mean business.”

  “They always mean business, Dolly,” Magnus said. “It always ends messily. I’ve seen enough mundanes splattered on walls to last me—”

  Suddenly a bell on the wall started ringing feverishly. This was followed by a loud, deep call from the main room.

  “RAID!”

  This was followed by a lot of screaming.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Magnus said. He set the bottle of cheap champagne on the bar and indicated that Dolly should help herself, as he was sure she would even without permission. He went back through into the main bar, where an atmosphere of general madness had taken over. The band didn’t pack up, but they had stopped playing. Some people were gulping back drinks, others running for the door, still others crying and panicking.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” he called. “Please simply set your drinks on the tables. All will be well. Remain seated.”

  Magnus had enough regulars now that there was somewhat of an established routine. These people were sitting down and cheerfully lighting cigarettes, barely turning to look at the axes that were already picking their way through the door.

  “Lights!” Magnus called dramatically.

  At once, the bar staff turned off all the lights and the speakeasy was thrown into darkness, save for the glowing orange tips of cigarettes.

  “Now, please, everyone,” Magnus said, over the yells of police and the banging of the axe and the splintering of the wood. “If we could all count to three together. One!”

  They joined in nervously for “two” and “three.” There was a flash of blue, then a final crack as the door came down and the police tumbled inside. Then all at once, the lights came up again. But the speakeasy was gone. All the patrons found in front of them were porcelain teapots and cups of tea. The jazz band had been replaced by a string quartet, who immediately began playing soothing music. The bottles behind the bar were gone, replaced by a well-stocked bookshelf. Even the décor had changed—the walls were lined with bookshelves and velvet draperies, all concealing the bar and the stock of alcohol.

  “Gentlemen!” Magnus threw open his arms. “Welcome to our tea and book circle. We were just about to discuss tonight’s book, Jude the Obscure. You’re just in time! I may have to ask you to pay for the door, but I understand the impulse. One simply mustn’t be late to the discussion!”

  The crowd began to fall about laughing. They waggled their teacups at the police and waved copies of the books.

  Magnus tried to vary this routine every time. Once, when the lights came back up, he had transformed the bar into an apiary, with buzzing beehives all around the room. Another time it became a prayer circle, with many of the guests wearing the garb of nuns and ministers.

  Usually, this confused the police so much that the raids were brief and relatively nonviolent. But each time, he sensed their frustration growing. Tonight the group was led by McMantry, as crooked a cop as Magnus had ever met. Magnus had refused to pay him off on principle, and now he was coming down on Mr. Dry’s Bar. They had come prepared this time. Every officer had a tool—at least a dozen axes, just as many sledgehammers, crowbars, and even a shovel or two.

  “Take them all,” McMantry said. “Everyone goes in the wagon. And then take this joint apart.”

  Magnus waggled his fingers behind his back to conceal the blue light that webbed between them. At once, four panels fell away from the walls, revealing hallways and escape routes. His customers ran for them. They would come out in four different locations, some blocks away. Just a bit of gentle, protective magic. No one deserved to go to jail for having a cocktail. A few officers tried to follow, only to find the passages were suddenly blind.

  Magnus let the heavy glamour drop, and the speakeasy regained its normal appearance. This stunned the police long enough to allow him to slip behind a nearby curtain and glamour himself invisible. He walked right out of the bar, past the officers. He paused only for a moment to watch them pull back the curtain and study the wall behind, looking for the way to access the escape hatch they assumed had to be there.

  Back out on the street, it was a thick September night. New York often stayed hot this time of year, and New York humidity had its own special quality. The air was viscous, full of the murk of the East River and the Hudson and the sea and the swamp, full of smoke and ash, full of the smell of every kind of cooking food, and the raw smell of gas.

  He walked down to one of the exit points, where an excited cluster of customers stood laughing and talking about what had just happened. This group was made up of some of his favorite regulars, including the handsome Alfie.

  “Come on!” Magnus said. “I think we should continue this at my place, don’t you?”

  A dozen people agreed that this was an excellent idea. Magnus hailed a taxi, and some of the others did the same. Soon there was a merry little chain of taxis ready to go. Just as one more person was squeezing into the backseat with Magnus, Dolly leaned in the window and spoke into his ear.

  “Hey, Magnus!” she said. “Don’t forget. Watch the money!”

  Magnus gave her a polite, yes, whatever nod, and she giggled and tripped off. She was such a tiny thing. Very pretty indeed. And very drunk. She would probably go off to the Bowery now and eat her fill on the city’s less fortunate.

  Then the train of taxis began to move, and the entire party (which, from a glance out the back window, looked to have expanded by another dozen) made its way uptown to the Plaza Hotel.

  When Magnus woke the next morning, the first thing he noticed was the fact that it was much, much, much too bright. Someone really needed to get rid of the sun.

 
Magnus quickly worked out that the excessive brightness was due to the fact that all the curtains seemed to be missing from the bedroom of his suite. He then noted the four fully dressed (sigh) people sleeping around him on the bed, all oblivious to the sunlight and dead to the world.

  The third thing he noticed, perhaps the most puzzling, was the pile of car tires at the foot of the bed.

  It took Magnus a few moments and a number of strange contortions to get over the sleepers and out of his bed. There were easily twenty more sleeping and passed-out people all over the living room. The curtains were also missing from the windows of this room, but he could see where they’d all gone. People were using them as blankets and improvised tenting. Alfie alone was awake, sitting on the sofa and looking out at the sunny day miserably.

  “Magnus,” he groaned. “Kill me, won’t you?”

  “Why, that’s illegal!” Magnus replied. “And you know how I feel about breaking the law. And who are all these people? There weren’t this many when I fell asleep.”

  Alfie shrugged, indicating that the universe was mysterious and nothing would ever be fully understood.

  “I mean it,” Alfie said. “If you don’t want to use that voodoo whatever, just hit me on the head with something. You gotta kill me.”

  “I’ll get you a bracer,” Magnus said. “Iced tomato juice and Tabasco, sliced grapefruits, and a plate of scrambled eggs, that’s what we need. I’ll have room service send up two dozen of each.”

  He stumbled over a few people to the phone, only to find that he had actually reached for a large, decorative cigarette dispenser. It was possible he was not quite at his best either.

  “And coffee,” he added, setting this down and picking up the telephone receiver with tremendous dignity. “I will order some of that as well.”

  Magnus placed the order with room service, who had by now stopped questioning Mr. Bane’s unusual needs for things like twenty-four plates of scrambled eggs and “enough coffee to fill one of your larger bathtubs.” He joined Alfie on the sofa and watched a few of his new guests turn and groan in their slumber.