Where Evil Lurks

by Robert D. Rodman

  “Fairly nice” was an understatement. We’d driven past sundry mansions before pulling up to Dr. Brodsky’s home. Six Greek columns fronted the doctor’s house. They supported a second-story roof that overhung a broad porch with decorative benches, statues and urns. Floodlights on the roof illuminated the grounds and façade of the house. The architecture dwarfed Ashley as she mounted the steps to the porch. The front door was thrown wide open before she reached it. A bespectacled man in a black turtleneck greeted her. The two of them exchanged hugs and European-style kisses: first one cheek, then the other, then the first. The door closed.

  The driver asked me if I wanted to sightsee, but I didn’t. I was content to sip champagne, eat a sandwich, and peruse one of those Harry Potter books that all the kids were dotty about, and that I found in the limo’s library.

  I was soon drowsing, the result of a long day full of flying, not to mention the champagne and the coziness of the limo. I put down the book, slipped off my shoes and tucked my feet under me, and put a CD in the player. Appropriately, I had grabbed a disk of Chopin nocturnes—night music for the piano—and I was as mesmerized by the music as I imagined Ashley to be by Dr. Brodsky’s undulating pocket watch.

  The next thing I knew, the door opened and Ashley slid into one of the seats. Her face was ashen and she’d been crying. She found a bottle of VSOP brandy in the bar and poured herself two-fingers worth. When she had drunk half of it, she lit a cigarette with a snap of the harp-shaped lighter. After a deep drag she was sufficiently composed to order the driver to return to the airport. I let her speak first.

  “It’s him, Strong.” She waved the photograph. “He came around the rear of the van and grabbed me from the front. Fatboy grabbed me from behind. Before seeing his picture, the face was a blur in my memory. Once my mind had something substantial to relate to, Dr. Brodsky could bring me to the exact moment that I first saw him.”

  She paused to finish the brandy, her hand still shaky.

  “God, I can’t do this any more. You may not know, but hypnotism brings back emotional memory even more vividly than sensory memory. So you suffer the emotional trauma of the sensory event.”

  Slowly, Ashley regained her composure and the color returned to her face. She turned to me and said, “Tomorrow you will go to Orlando to see if this Harry Angelica can be found. There is some resemblance between him and Jeanne-Renée. I want a DNA test.”

  The return flight to Raleigh was every bit as lovely as the flight up. Visibility remained perfect and the night sky was a splendor. Brad pointed out more landmarks, such as the oval-shaped Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

  It was midnight in Raleigh when we touched down. I’d done about as much flying in one day as an airline professional, but without doing the work. It was exhausting nonetheless and it raised my opinion of the men and women who fill those jobs. Ashley’s helicopter was waiting for her. She reminded me to stay in touch and wished me luck in Orlando. I stayed to watch her soar away. What a life! What a tortured soul!

  CHAPTER 12

  I was home again. Although it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, there was an unusual amount of activity. Cars sped by, stereos pounding, screaming young heads hanging out the windows. The city was up late, for State had won an upset victory over a hated football rival. Nothing including an Elvis sighting or the return of The Grateful Dead would fuel this level of excitement among the city’s striplings. And nothing including the risk of alcohol poisoning would dampen their spirits faster than the siren call of the blue-lighted squad car that raced past my front door.

  Thankfully, festivities soon ended. I dropped into bed, exhausted, missing my dogs for the brief moments that preceded sleep. I slept dreamlessly and awoke in time for my Saturday morning martial arts class at nearby State College.

  I’d forgotten about yesterday’s game but there were plenty of signs on campus to remind me of it. Rolls of toilet paper draped the trees and bushes. An extraterrestrial botanist would have marveled that plants would bear so utilitarian a fruit. Revelers had spray painted the upset score, 10-3 apparently, on the asphalt roads and parking lots. Crews were already at work removing the vast numbers of empty containers scattered everywhere.

  The gym was open and the usual folks were there. I didn’t have any particular friends among them, but they were familiar faces and it was agreeable to see them. The autumn day was so splendid that the instructor had us bring mats outdoors for the morning workout. We warmed up with a one-mile jog and it was sheer joy to breathe the oaky air and feel the cool breeze. Class that morning focused on defense against being grabbed. The lesson taught us to respond swiftly before being lifted off the ground, mainly by the judicious and violent use of the elbow.

  Post-workout ablutions complete, I went immediately to bail out Hank and Midas, who were at first happy to see me, but then remembered to sulk at their unfair treatment. I cheered them up with some playtime and then broke the “good news, bad news.” The bad news is I was off again; the good news was that Janet, known to the hounds as “Auntie Janet,” would mind them while I was away this time.

  After dropping them off at Janet’s, where they willingly and happily go, I returned home to pack for Orlando. At four o’clock I was sitting in my first-class seat sipping orange juice as the coach passengers boarded; I felt somewhat sheepish about my temporary elevation in social class.

  I’d downloaded information about the hotel that I was going to, and where Harry Angelica had lived at some point, and perhaps was still living. The Sans Souci hotel is one of the five hotels on International Crescent. The others are the Mirabelle, the Tierra Verde, the Alcazar, and the Raphael. They’re all different, each following the architectural traditions of Germany, France, Spain, Moorish Spain, and Italy. Sans Souci is the name of a Prussian palace in Potsdam, Germany. Its Orlando namesake had a duplicate of its formal colonnade to mark its entrance.

  The lobby was huge, reaching out in various directions towards the pools, the restaurants, the rooms, and the shops. There was a long line at the check-in counter but as there were eight stations for the newcomers, it moved quickly. Children of all ages were underfoot, bouncing off each other and entangling innocent bystanders. It seemed like I was the only one in the hotel not bound for a major entertainment site with a passel of kids. But then, what the hell was Harry doing here, and living here long enough to have it as his mailing address?

  Because nearly every man in the lobby was part of a family, the square-jawed man with a crew cut stood out. Like me, he was alone, and he was measuring me up as though I might make a comrade-in-arms against the family hordes. I didn’t much feel like being hit on, and directed my gaze at my feet. I half expected a tap on the shoulder, but when I chanced to look up, he was gone.

  The clerk that checked me in couldn’t believe that I didn’t have at least one child with me. After all, how many single people are willing to pay for a suite? I assured her I was alone and didn’t mind paying the same price I’d pay if accompanied by the residents of an orphanage. I did, however, put in a request for a more modest room if one came open. She handed me my key and a gazillion flyers hawking specials, bargains, discounts, rebates and markdowns. I told her I was meeting a colleague named Harry Angelica, and wondered if I could leave him a message.

  She sent me to the message desk where I queued up and repeated my request when my turn came. There was neither a Harry Angelica in residence nor a reservation in that name. To my question of whether a Harry Angelica had ever stayed in the hotel, I was politely informed that hotel policy did not permit the handing out of such information.

  My suite was laughably large. My Bösendorfer at home would have fit in the “living room” after a minor rearrangement of furniture. The suite was on the second of three floors in one of the many detached annexes of the hotel. I could come and go inconspicuously, although I didn’t see the need for stealth at the time.

  I unpacked, washed my hands and face, reapplied a little eyeliner and a tad of blu
sher, tucked a map of the grounds into my bag, and went to find a quiet place to eat. “Quiet” is a relative term in a hotel whose clientele have come to play at the greatest entertainment complex on earth. I settled for a Mexican-theme bar with a small menu. It at least had the benefit that the background clatter was an adult din in lieu of screaming children. I ordered a margarita without salt and a chicken fajita.

  I had the snapshot of Harry with me and there wasn’t any reason not to go right to work. After eating I moved to the bar and ordered another drink. It was peak time and people had stored up big thirsts bustling about all day under the Florida sun. The bartender, a whirling dervish of mix-shake-pour, struggled to keep up with demand, and it was an hour before I could show her the photo of Harry. She didn’t recognize him.

  There were three other bars in the hotel. I repeated the scenario in each, leaving untouched drinks behind, and suffering similar results. Maybe Harry didn’t drink, he drank in his room, or he patronized other bars in other hotels.

  It’s easy to find the main building of the hotel from one of the outbuildings, but on the return trip you find yourself in a maze of swimming pools, shuffle board courts, ping-pong tables, Jacuzzis, fountains and refreshment stands. The grounds appear different at night than in the day on account of artful lighting that is pretty to look at but not helpful for navigation. I was by now on the grounds of the Tierra Verde and hopelessly astray. I dug the map out of my handbag.

  I was standing under a light turning the map to align it with the territory when a man addressed me. “Can I help you find something? I know my way around this place pretty good.”

  I looked up and nearly swallowed my tongue. It was Harry. He had even said “dis place,” in a New Jersey accent. He was with another man—a hulking figure—and two very pretty kids in their late teens, a boy and a girl.

  This was both good luck and bad luck. Good in that I’d found him and no longer needed to make inquiries, which I was fearful he’d discover—I didn’t want him to be on his guard. Bad, because I couldn’t hide behind a screen of anonymity in my effort to get the DNA sample. The one thing in my favor was that my back was to the light, so I could see him and his entourage more clearly than they could see me.

  I reacted as quickly as my wits would allow. “No thank you,” I squeaked, “I see where to go.”

  I spun around and walked briskly away. It was a natural reaction for a young woman alone at night when approached by two men, and I doubted that it would raise suspicions. I kept walking, not daring to look back. I took a slight turn so I could see behind me out of the corner of my eye. There was no one there. I consulted the map again, and once I got oriented easily found my building.

  I called the other four hotels in the morning and asked for Harry Angelica, with negative results. Either he was staying elsewhere or he’d checked in under a different name. I assumed that he was in one of the five hotels, using an alias. I planned to look for him without revealing myself. I took the clothes I’d had on when he saw me and put them away, for they were not to be worn again. My short-cropped blond hair and my pale face made me stand out among the tanned, long-haired women who frequented the hotels. I would have to remedy that.

  I could do little until the stores opened Monday. I spent Sunday exploring the grounds. I wore a scarf over my hair and baggy clothes that I padded with throw pillows from the couch in my suite. I looked like the Michelin Man’s girlfriend. As I wandered around, I kept a sharp eye out for Harry and his friends.

  The five hotels stand on the perimeter of a horseshoe-shaped park bordered by a fresh water pond that snakes around the entire horseshoe save for the open side. Various aquatic creatures inhabit the pond, including swans, ducks, turtles and frogs. Several bridges link the walking paths that are on both sides of the water. The paths converge beyond the pond’s end and become a hiking trail, after passing under a highway and leaving the developed area.

  The grounds of the hotels blend into one another, and it’s not always clear whose property you’re on, not that it seemed to matter. By repeatedly walking from the Sans Souci at one end of the horseshoe, to the Raphael at the other end, and back, I obtained a good sense of the area’s layout. The Raphael was nearly half a mile away from the Sans Souci if you took the circular route, but you could halve the trip by crossing from one tip of the horseshoe to the other using the bridges.

  Because everything appeared different at night, I repeated my explorations after dark. I must have walked five miles all told that day, not that the exercise wasn’t welcome. In the end I was able to find my way between the five hotels and their recreation areas with unerring accuracy.

  On Monday morning I drove to Orlando where, with a little help from the Yellow Pages and much getting lost, I found a shop that sold wigs. I was about to experience life as a brunette. A brief stop at a mall served up a pair of wide-lens Ray-Bans to embellish the disguise. Though Florida is the right place to acquire a tan, I bought some tan-in-a-bottle to hasten the appearance of one.

  Back in my room, I soon learned that it’s frustratingly difficult to apply tanning lotion to your own skin and come out looking like anything other than an exotic piebald creature. Oh well, so much the better the disguise, I supposed. I donned the wig and the Ray-Bans, and thus camouflaged, walked to the pool at the Tierra Verde to start on a natural tan, and to watch for Harry.

  Days by the pool, nights in the bars, all on an expense account. This might be some people’s concept of paradise. To me, it was work. Surveillance is mind numbing. Mostly nothing happens, but you must remain alert. I invented game after game to stay focused. I counted the number of people who walked by a certain point, to see how long it took to reach one hundred. I repeated this while keeping track of females versus males. Then adults versus children. Once I thought I saw the boy that had been with Harry that night, but I wasn’t sure. After two days of no results at the Tierra Verde, I moved the daylight operation to the Alcazar.

  At night I circulated randomly among the various bars in the five hotels, careful not to visit any one bar often enough to stand out. I wore a different outfit every night, buying them in the morning when the hotel shops opened, and never patronizing the same shop twice.

  In this manner several days passed. I worried that Harry had only been visiting the night he spoke to me, and wasn’t residing in any of the hotels. Or perhaps he’d already moved on. I was taking sun at the Raphael by this time, and my tan was genuine. I threw the bottled stuff in the trash.

  As shadows overtook the pool area on Thursday afternoon, I gathered my possessions to return to my suite. I had one last look around and bingo! there was a head of dark blond hair with the rest of Harry under it. He was alone, walking toward the main building of the hotel. I pulled my straw hat down over my ears, put on my three-quarter-length terrycloth robe, and trailed after him.

  Harry went directly to an elevator with an open door. I didn’t dare follow. Instead, I timed how long it took his elevator to return. Forty seconds, and it came back empty.

  Since the other three elevators sat idle on the ground floor, there was a good chance that Harry’s elevator had gone up and come back unused by anyone except him.

  I got in the same elevator, checked my watch, and mashed (that’s how we say it in the South) the top button. The elevator mounted to the eighth floor. The door opened, closed, and returned to the ground floor in fifty seconds. But damn! I’d forgotten a crucial measurement. I repeated the experiment, noting that it took about two and one-half seconds for the elevator to pass between floors. Since the eighth floor roundtrip was ten seconds longer, Harry’s trip had to have been to the sixth floor. Hah! And my ninth grade math teacher had thought I was hopeless.

  A bellhop noticed that I’d been up and down twice in the same elevator. He was an older man with graying sideburns. He asked me, speaking with a foreign accent, if I needed help.

  “I just realized I’m in the wrong hotel,” I said. “I’m staying at the Alcazar, not the Ra
phael. I always get those Italian painters mixed up.” While he pondered that inanity, I escaped back to the pool area.

  The Raphael didn’t appear to be sold out. I called from my room and asked if they had a vacancy and if so, might I be on the sixth floor, as I’d stayed there last year and was partial to the view.

  “Let me check that for you, madam,” said the voice on the other end. After a lengthy pause, he came back on. “I do have a room available. I must advise you that it isn’t the quietest room in the hotel. It’s across the hall from our corporate suite, which is occupied by the owner of a movie company. He has people in every night and they do tend to stay up late. There’ve been complaints.”

  “That’s not a problem for me. I’m very much of a night owl myself.”

  “The hotel will discount your room twenty-five percent,” the nice man said.

  I arranged to check in the next day.

  That night I went back to the Raphael and was rewarded with a sighting. In a bar called “The Bellini,” I spotted Harry and his large friend sitting at a long table with a slew of good-looking boys and girls whose drinking ages were doubtful.

  I found a stool at the bar, which afforded me a view of his table. The place swarmed with newly arrived weekend revelers. I could spy on Harry’s group surreptitiously, shrouded by clusters of people and the smoky thickness of the air. I’d done everything to make myself unnoticeable. My mousy wig, ill-fitting clothes, and rounded shoulders as I hunched over my drink did not inspire second looks. From time to time I had to suppress my vanity, for I prefer to look attractive.