by Chris Knopf
I made her clink glasses.
"You'll know when something happens," I said.
"When what happens?"
"You'll know."
"You don't trust me," she said.
"Not entirely."
"I don't deserve that."
"Yes you do," I said. "That and more. You're a very bright woman, but not aware of your own behavior. I'm not completely wise to your game, but I know you have a game, which is almost as good."
She gave my knee an affectionate slap, a gesture favored by Jackie Swaitkowski.
"But you like me anyway, don't you?" said Anika.
"I do," I said, in a moment weakened by the unexpected association with Jackie, never more than a friend, but a friend that had bred in me an unqualified devotion. Whether she knew it or not.
"You came back for me, even after you were safe and sound," she said.
"I did. Not very successfully as it turns out."
"I'm wearing you down."
"I can't say that I know you," I said, "but I think I know enough."
She writhed in her chair in a fluid, preening way, as if channeling her cat. It was part pleasure with my words, part preamble to what she was about to say.
"I know you," she said. "You're afraid of death. You finally have a life you hope is worth living, but you're unsure, afraid to repeat all the same mistakes. You love your girlfriend, but you don't trust her enough to go in whole hog. So you pretend it's a great relationship even while you fret over what could be fatal shortcomings. You're exhausted by your own ambivalence and are secretly longing for an alternative to present itself. That alternative is staring right at you, and you like it."
Her words were punctuated by a slight lift of the floor, timed with the sound of the wind battering the west wall of the hotel, and a little involuntary yelp from Del Rey, who grabbed at a nearby curtain to keep from falling. Both Fey and Hammon looked over at me with questions on their faces, but I ignored them.
"What's under this floor?" I asked Anika.
"Not the basement. A crawl space? This part was added on by the former owners so they could have a restaurant. My father keeps ladders and big planks under there."
"The wind's getting underneath," I said.
"Is that bad?"
"Depends on your definition."
Another gust blew the Persian carpet in front of us a few inches off the floor. I looked over at Hammon who was buried in a conversation with Jock and Pierre. 't Hooft sat with them, but was distracted, apparently more engaged by the furor going on outside. He got Hammon's attention by gripping the other man's arm.
"Somebody should go out there and check on conditions," 't Hooft said to Hammon.
Jock stood up without hesitation and gave Hammon a casual salute. Hammon nodded to him and I watched while he put on a windbreaker and zipped it up. Hammon looked over at me.
"You've been through these storms before?" he asked.
"Some storms like this, yeah," I said.
He looked at Jock.
"Take Acquillo with you," he said. "I want his opinion."
Jock shrugged and grinned at me, which I read not so much as a warning but a wished-for expectation that I'd try something stupid. I gave him the same sort of salute he'd given Hammon and stood up. I was still wearing my rain jacket, torn at the elbow from one of the various maneuvers I'd put myself through, but otherwise functional.
We walked to the front of the hotel and opened the door. A giant punched me in the chest and tried to yank the doorknob out of my hand. Jock grabbed the edge of the door and held it while we both fought our way outside. When we were clear, he let go and the door slammed shut.
"Shit," he said, "it's really blowing."
We were peppered by light debris spun up from the ground, and while the air was mostly dry, it felt pregnant with the promise of rain. The wind was blowing in from the west, so I led us around the east side of the hotel, down the brick path past the outdoor shower and out to the docks. Everything that could be cleared off the dock before the last storm was gone, so the only motion was an erratic sway of tall aluminum poles that supported the dock lights. I pushed myself to the end of the center walkway to where we'd docked the Carpe Mariana, put my arm around a pier and shot my little flashlight into the Inner Harbor.
It was as if the wind and water had decided to merge into one. I felt the saltwater on my tongue, pelting my cheeks and burning my eyes. The only definition you could see in the waves was in their frenzied, frothy rush across the harbor. On the other side of the channel clumps of tall grass and wild rose were flattened out and slathered with sea foam, which skittered across the surface of the water and sprayed up into the air. A small motor boat, once a foolish straggler out in the mooring field, was half-buried in the foliage, upside down, its white and blue hull bared to the sky like the belly of a big fish.
I wet a finger and stuck it in the air. Then I took the handheld compass out of my jacket pocket, and took a reading.
I had what I needed, so I signaled to Jock that I was going back, and the two of us lurched and staggered our way to the hotel, retracing our steps down the brick path and around the side.
"Look at the drowned rats," said Del Rey, when she saw us coming into the restaurant, stripping off our jackets and wiping off our faces with table linen. "So I guess it's finally raining."
"That's not rain," I said. "It's the Inner Harbor."
They were still trying to figure out what I meant when Fey asked, "So what's the prognosis?"
I shrugged in a broad theatrical way, playing to the dispersed nature of my audience.
"No big deal. It's just a little wind. I say we drink the Swan dry and pretend we get along."
Del Rey liked that.
"Hip-hip, hooray," she yelled, holding her glass above her head.
Hammon jumped up from his chair, stalked over to her and grabbed her wrist, gradually lowering her hand to avoid spilling some sort of clear concoction out of the glass. He whispered something in her ear that made her freeze, everything but her eyes, which shifted from side to side, expressing more of what she felt than what she saw.
"You're no fun," she said to the room, an all-in-one statement of defiance, contrition and disappointment. She shook her hand free and walked an irregular line over to the bar, head high and back straight. Hammon shook his head as he watched her, and then catching himself, slumped back in his chair. 't Hooft whispered something that caused Hammon to nod brusquely and flick his hand in the air, as if swatting away a noxious thought.
The weather noise outside suddenly died down, so abruptly that all conversation in the room stopped and all eyes flashed toward the walls and ceiling. Having been in a hurricane before, I knew what was coming next.
The roar started low, but built up fast, from the bottom up. You felt it in your feet, then up through your body, and eventually, when it reached your ears, you were already distracted by the concussive force of the blow.
The Swan took it broadside, a mighty gust that sent convulsions down the walls and into the foundation, which my engineer's instincts said was straining to hold the building in place, stressed but defiant against the kinetic forces arrayed against it.
Del Rey screamed and 't Hooft dashed across the room and took hold of her. Anika just stared at me, as if I was in collusion with the storm. Jock looked amused, but Pierre was impressed.
"So that was a pretty big piece of wind, eh?" he said.
"Not at all," I said. "It's just warming up."
Nobody seemed to like that.
"I thought you said the wind was no big deal," said 't Hooft.
"For a place like this?" I said. "Not that I've actually examined the structure," I added, looking up at the ceiling as if I could see straight through to the rafters.
"You say you're a carpenter?" Hammon asked me.
"I am."
"And an engineer?"
"More on the mechanical side, but I know what holds buildings together," I said.
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The wind swept from west to east across the back end of the restaurant, as if a ghostly calvary had just rushed by. Hammon's self-control, never fully in place, loosened another notch or two.
"Maybe you should take a look around," he said, pointing at Jock to go along with me. "Assuming you know what the hell you're looking at."
"That'll have to be your call," I said.
Hammon wearily gave his final assent, so my new buddy and I headed out for another exploration. I told him we should start in the basement.
We swam down into the cool, wet and moldy air, guided by my intrepid little flashlight. Fey had given me the basic lay of the land, but we still had to move cautiously to avoid colliding with old furniture, crates filled with drinking glasses, rotting canopies, lawn games, folding tables and all the other detritus accumulated by a resort hotel over the decades. My objective was the sill, where the foundation of the building was joined to the frame, a juncture important enough for modern building codes to require substantial reinforcement. For a reason.
We reached the foundation wall at the back of the hotel where the restaurant had been attached as an addition years before. I used a crate to get up high enough to stick my head between the floor joists where I could examine the sill and crawl space under the restaurant. The storm noises were dampened somewhat by the structure overhead, but plenty loud enough, and when another big gust hit, I had the flashlight trained directly on the sill plate, a single two-by-eight plank of wood that served as the interface between the stone foundation and the floor members.
I saw what I needed to see.
"Looks okay so far," I said to Jock. "Let's head up to the attic."
He followed me up the three flights of stairs and hung close to me as I crawled out over the joists to the inside of the eave, the tight V formed where the roof, the exterior wall and ceiling for the second floor all came together. I watched as the wind massaged the hotel and I lightly ran my hand over the old framing material like a faith healer working the county fair.
"Christ, it's noisy," Jock yelled, demonstrating his point.
"We're pretty close to the action up here," I yelled back. "Let's go back down."
He waited until we were on the second floor to ask my professional opinion.
"We're fine," I said. "The place is built like a bunker."
"I been in bunkers," he said. "This is no bunker."
"Okay, pick a better metaphor. I'm not going to fight you over it."
He snorted.
Nothing much had changed when we got back to the dim and shadowy restaurant. Del Rey sat with Hammon and 't Hooft, though apart, her eyelids half-closed, but her chin held high, her cocktail loose in a limp right hand. A thick strand of hair had escaped from the pile on top of her head and lay like a yellow comma against her nose. The way 't Hooft looked at her, I imagined him wanting to reach over and flick the strand off her face. I almost did it myself.
"What's the verdict, Doc?" she asked when she saw me approach.
"The Swan's good for another hundred years," I said. "Don't worry about the noise. It sounds a lot worse than it is. How come I'm not drinking?"
Anika went to replenish my glass. I was left with Christian Fey, who looked unsure of what to do with himself, whether he should be sitting uneasily or leaping up from the table to run off on some more productive pursuit. I sat down next to him.
He leaned back and looked at me, as if slightly affronted by my presence. But then he said, "I haven't adequately thanked you for securing the safety of my wayward son."
"You don't have to thank me," I said. "I do things for my own reasons."
"Thank you anyway."
I realized it was one of the few times I'd been alone with Fey without Anika there as a buffer.
"You don't think Axel sabotaged 5.0," I said to him.
He shook his head.
"The thought is absurd. Axel has done his share of destructive hacking, I know to my eternal sorrow, but it's all child's play compared to what afflicts 5.0. You can't imagine the diabolical wizardry of such a thing. I'm desperate for them to let me examine it."
"Then why does everyone else think he did?" I asked. "Isn't that why Hammon's here?"
"Hammon's a fool."
"But he knows your son," I said.
Fey leaned forward in his chair and put his hand on my knee, about the last thing I'd expect him to do. I fought the urge to pull away. His look was hard and cold.
"No one knows my children," he said in a voice I could barely hear over the battering wind.
Anika brought my drink and two glasses of wine on a small tray over to the table. After she'd handed out the drinks and sat down, I asked Fey, "Why didn't you leave the Swan with me and Anika? Did you know they were waiting for us?"
"I couldn't decide what to bring and what to leave," he said. "You were right to go on without me."
"Best laid plans," said Anika with a little shrug.
There was another lull outside. Everyone in the room looked toward the walls of the restaurant. I shifted my chair away from the table, took Anika by the hand, and pulled her toward the door into the hotel. A moment later a savage gust exploded against the back of the hotel, blasting through the big windows and glass doors that overlooked the docks. Wind, rain, tree limbs and table settings suddenly filled the air. The table where Hammon and company sat next to the windows launched toward the ceiling, propelled by the wind and the bucking floor. Del Rey, standing behind the service bar, screamed and covered her face. I saw most of this through a blizzard of water and debris as I pulled Anika by the wrist toward the back wall.
Before we reached the door, a deafening screech came from above as the roof of the restaurant lifted off the walls and blew up into the back of the hotel. I shoved Anika through the door and followed her, banging hard against the jamb as the floor fell out from under me. I looked back into the chaos and saw Hammon and Pierre pinned against the east wall. 't Hooft had a grip on the sleeve of Hammon's light jacket. The wall waved like a sail in the wind. Del Rey screamed again, and everyone looked across to the opposite wall where she clung to the top of the service bar. 't Hooft let go of Hammon and started to work his way over the disintegrating floor. Hammon reached out and yelled at him to stop, but without looking back, 't Hooft shot him a middle finger and pressed ahead. I saw no sign of Jock, and had no more time to look, busy as I was trying to get Christian Fey up out of the hole that was once the crawl space under the restaurant.
I knelt down, gripped the door jamb and extended my hand. Anika wrapped her arms around me and pulled backwards as Fey reached up and grabbed my forearm, allowing me to grab his. He wedged his foot into a chink in the old stone foundation and stepped up as I pulled his arm, and aided by Anika's weight, yanked him through the door and into the hotel, where we all landed in a heap.
I shoved him off me and stood up, helping Anika, and then Fey do the same. We were in a room that served as a broad hallway, leading to the front lobby, or into the bar area. I shut the door to the lobby, then herded the Feys into the bar, shutting that door as well.
"What about the others?" shouted Fey.
"We have to keep the wind pressure out of the hotel. If they can make it to the hallway, they can make it here," I shouted back.
To help prove my point, the building was shaken by another big gust, following which came the sound of the restaurant roof tearing apart and scattering to either side of the hotel and through shattering glass upstairs.
"You said it was good for another hundred years," said Fey.
"Can't be right all the time," I said, pushing them ahead of me through the bar and toward the front door. When we got there, I told them to stay at the rear of the lobby away from the windows. I opened the front door, which the wind nearly wrenched off its hinges, and jumped down behind the bushes that lined the front of the hotel. I kept my back to the shingled siding and inched along, searching the ground for my backpack, which I found at the corner, just where Anika said it w
ould be.
The Mercedes was also where I'd left it. A big tree limb lay in front of the car, but there was room to drive around to reach the street. I squirmed under the chassis and saw that the clip-on cable was still in place. But not surprisingly, the keys weren't in the ignition. I popped the hood and dropped my pack on the seat so I could dig out two more cables, these lighter and more flexible. It had been a long time since I'd looked in the engine compartment of a Mercedes, and longer still since I'd hotwired one. There were surely modern safeguards against such a thing that would be tough to ferret out even under the best of circumstances.
I snapped off the cover of what I thought was the engine control unit, a device that electronically managed both ignition and fuel supply. I found what I hoped was the line that fed power to the unit, and traced it back to a fuse block under the dashboard. There I switched the line to a feed that saw current without needing the key turned in the ignition and prayed for an appropriate amperage. Then I went back to the engine and ran another cable directly from the battery to the starter and turned over the engine.
It caught.
My astonishment was quickly interrupted by a blast of wind that tried to wrench the raised hood off the car. I slammed it shut, grabbed my backpack and went back to get Anika and Fey.
They both wore rain jackets, and Fey handed me one of my own. Anika had a fanny pack around her waist and held a soft cat carrier. Eloise looked through the web mesh with unrestrained terror. I put Fey in the front passenger seat, telling him to keep his head down, and had Anika lie down in the back. I sat in the driver's seat and shifted into reverse so I could back up and make room to maneuver around the limb. I was spinning the wheel and about to throw it into drive when a fist came through the window and snapped across my cheek, the pulverized glass raining into the car and biting into my cheek.
Before I could make sense of what just happened, the fist turned into a vice that grabbed me by the throat. It wasn't lack of air, it was the imminent possibility that my larynx would be crushed that motivated me.
I shoved the floor shifter into drive, then pulled the .38 out of my backpack and shot the guy in the elbow. The hand released its grip and I stuck the accelerator to the floor, glancing out the smashed window just in time to catch the sight of Jock, bent over, his arm held close to his body, his face still the impassive mask it had always been. His good hand was pulling a big, black gun out of a holster on his belt.
