“You didn't tell them. You're something.”
“That pig,” she said. She settled against me. “How come you're always warm? I've wondered about that for years.”
“The banked fires of genius.”
“We're going to need them.”
“Fortunately, they didn't think of throwing water on me.”
She stiffened. “Oh, no. Did they hurt you too? Jesus,” she said uncharacteristically, “I didn't even ask.”
“Not much,” I said, feeling brave.
“That's just like you. Eagle Scout to the toes. Did they?”
“I'll be a few short on my five-finger exercises for a while.”
“Oh, my gosh. Do you think you'll lose the nails?”
I laughed again. “I certainly hope so. That would take weeks.”
“We're going to get out,” she said. “We're going to get out and then we're going to glue those two together with Krazy Glue and give them to Al Hammond. Merryman's front to Barry's back. No, reverse that. I think Merryman would enjoy it.”
“I think they'd both enjoy it. Why don't we just glue their lips and nostrils closed and watch them try to breathe through their ears.”
“Poor old Brooks,” she said. After a moment she said, “On the other hand, fuck him.” I'd never heard her use the word before. “Let's just worry about us.”
“The problem,” I said, “is how to measure time. Getting out of here early would be almost as bad as not getting out of here at all.”
“That's easy,” she said. “We'll just wait until we think it's time and then we'll wait a lot longer.” She shivered. “How long do you think it might be?”
“Two hours, maybe three.”
“That's a long time. What do you want to do in the meanwhile?”
“We could neck.”
“We could keep warm if we made love,” she said, startling me, “if it weren't for the rats, that is.”
I wrapped both arms around her, feeling an absurd surge of desire. “To be perfectly frank, though,” she said, “I've made love with rats before. We'll have to keep most of our clothes on, obviously.”
“No problem,” I said.
For the next hour or so, in pitch-darkness, we rediscovered each other. All the sweet familiarities flooded back, all the half-forgotten textures, smells, hills, mounds, the secret valleys, the most intimate landscapes. I twined her hair around my fingers and inhaled the yeasty scent of her skin. She licked the side of my neck in long, languorous cat-laps. It had always driven me crazy, and I was obscurely touched that she'd remembered.
“You need a shave,” she whispered.
“Do it with your teeth,” I said.
The clothes got in the way, and it didn't matter. When the cooler came on I noted the noise but didn't feel the drop in temperature. We achieved release together, just as we almost always had. Then Eleanor laughed.
“I hope you understand,” she said, “that I don't usually do it in refrigerators.”
“Plead special circumstances,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, “I do. I do.” She blew warm breath into my mouth. “Another first,” she said.
“I do my best.”
“You do better than anyone. Gee. Suppose someone had come in.”
“This bunch, they'd have enjoyed it.”
“Not as much as I did.”
Then she was silent. I heard her fingers scrabbling over elastic and buttons.
“What are you wearing?” I said.
“Oh, Simeon. You always used to ask me that on the phone. Remember?”
“And you used to answer me.” The basic, horrible fact of our situation reasserted itself.
“A pink blouse. And those black pants you bought me in Santa Monica, the ones with the big zippered pockets. Flats.”
“Good. A skirt would have gotten in the way later.”
“When has a skirt ever gotten in your way?” She was teasing on the square. This was the Eleanor I'd grown accustomed to over the past few years, and it had been my fault.
“Did you explore?” I said to change the subject.
“Only the door,” she said. “After that I sat down and the rat touched my hand. Then I didn't want to go anyplace. I just sat there, and after a while I think I went to sleep.”
“You slept?” Eleanor could sleep anywhere. She invariably fell asleep in planes before they took off, while I was coiled in my seat clutching a drink and repeating a secret mantra that went “Oh, my Lord, preserve the lives of those on board.” And I didn't even believe in God.
“I was up all night,” she said. “And what that man did to me wore me out.”
“Of course it did,” I said, getting up.
“Where are you going?”
“Out for a little air.”
“Very funny. I think I should get straight answers at this point.”
“I'm going to fool with the door.”
“It's not time yet. It can't be more than ten-thirty.”
“I want to know what I'm up against.”
“What we're up against,” she said a trifle acidly.
I felt around the edges of the door. The walls were all tile, about four inches by four inches, separated by narrow grouting. Moisture had condensed on the tiles. The door itself felt different: cold, metallic, and slightly rough to the touch. Zinc, maybe. The rollers were on the left side of the door, about hip-high. They felt rubbery. As she said, the handle had been removed. I felt around the rollers, closing my eyes even in the darkness to envision them.
“Piece of cake,” I said.
“My hero,” Eleanor crooned.
I pulled out the knife and pushed the button. It snicked open with a lethal little click.
“What's that?” she said.
“The knife,” I said. “I'm going to fool around a little.”
“Don't cut yourself,” she said automatically, and then she was laughing and I was laughing with her. Still laughing, I located the largest of the rollers with my fingers and slipped the knife into the crack between it and its neighbor. I worried it back and forth a little bit, feeling a reassuring give in the rollers. “God,” I said, “this thing is ancient.” I pushed the knife farther to the right.
The knife snapped.
“What was that?” she said.
I stood there, looking down through the darkness to the place where the broken knife blade would be. “Goddamn cheap fucking pimp,” I said. “Stingy, skinny-nosed, cocaine-sniffing son of a bitch.”
“What is it?” she said.
“What kind of asshole economizes on his knife? If you're dumb enough to carry one, you should be smart enough to carry a good one. Cheap piece of Taiwan shit.”
“It broke,” she said.
“Of course it broke. I should have known it would break. Gold wire wheels. Of course it broke.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“We're going to wait for them to come for us,” I said, sitting back down next to her. “Then we're going to rip them to pieces. What else can we do?”
“That was your plan?” she said. “The knife?”
“That was the beginning.”
She leaned against me with a long sigh. “I wish I hadn't asked,” she said.
About two hours later she said, “There must be a light.”
I'd been dozing in a sort of fitful free-association, and when she spoke I started. “What?” I said.
“A light,” she repeated. “People worked in here with the door closed to keep it cold. There was a handle on this side originally. Why wouldn't there be a light switch?”
“Why would there be a bulb?” I asked a little nastily. “So we can see our breath?”
“How do you know there isn't?”
“Because these people don't work that way. They want us to be in the dark. They didn't bother to give us blankets, did they?”
“Don't be insufferable. Have you got anything better to do with your time than look for the light switch?”
> “No,” I admitted.
“Well,” she said, “if it's here, it must be near the door.”
I let out an exasperated sigh, just to be doing something, and got up. I found the door and ran my hands around its perimeter. Then I put my palms flat against the tile wall and slid them upward along the right side of the door. Then I tried the left. There it was.
“Well, what do you know?” I said, and flipped it up.
Dim, chalky light filled the room. Eleanor, looking beyond me, squinted once and then screamed.
I turned around and screamed myself.
Standing in the corner, looking me straight in the eye, big as life and twice as dead, was Ellis Fauntleroy. He had a sign hung around his neck.
The sign said surprise!
Chapter 29
“Relax,” I said to Eleanor.
“He's dead.”
“That's very reassuring,” she said, chewing on the side of her hand.
I went over to poor old Ellis. His shirt had turned a dreadful brown color and it was full of sharp creases where the blood had stiffened it. His jaw hung slackly, making me think of the scene in Dickens in which Marley's ghost unbinds the wrappings beneath his chin and his jaw drops to his chest. It had convinced Scrooge.
“Who is he?” she said.
“He was one of them,” I said. “He was on Brooks's side. I guess it was the wrong side.”
“How can he be standing?” She'd gotten the better of her fright, which put her half a move in front of me, and she was determined to be analytical.
“Good question,” I said, making the supreme effort to put my hand on his shoulder. He turned quite easily. “Meat hook,” I said. “They stuck it through his jacket.” The entire wall was lined with meat hooks. Fauntleroy dangled there like a parody of the carcasses, the slit pigs and sides of beef, that had hung from them for the delectation of the gourmets upstairs in the dining room of the Borzoi.
I backed away and looked at my watch. After twelve. The Revealing was due to start in less than twenty minutes. And where, I wondered, was Dexter?
“This is a horrible place,” Eleanor observed with an attempt at objectivity.
I looked at dead old Ambrose, or rather Ellis, and suddenly I remembered Nickodell's. “Holy shit,” I said. “His fingernails.”
“They don't keep growing,” Eleanor said. “That's a myth.”
“This was a man who was crazy for clean fingernails.” I started to rifle his pockets.
“Yeah, and look where it got him.”
“Swiss precision,” I said. “It's got to be here. Why would you take a dead man's knife? Bingo.” It hung, red and heavy and shiny, from my fingers. “Nine million blades,” I said. “More blades than an army of ninjas. Even a screwdriver. It's got everything we need except a bazooka.”
“Let's go, then. He gives me the creeps.”
“He wasn't much better when he was alive,” I said. “Let's give it ten minutes. You sit there and read your palms or something and I'll make sure I've got this door figured out.”
“The hell with that,” she said. “I'm going to do some breathing. We both need to be calm and centered.” She closed her eyes, folded her hands in her lap, and breathed rhythmically.
“Anyone in the world, transported magically through time and space into the center of this refrigerator,” I said, fooling with the cylinders, “would know immediately that he was in Los Angeles. I should be forcing this lock with a crystal. Then we could make a slow, slushy escape while New Age music shimmers on the soundtrack.” Eleanor just breathed.
The screwdriver was the thing that did it. It was short, so there wasn't much leverage, but it was very thick. I knew in a minute and a half that I'd be able to force the lock. Leaving the screwdriver wedged in the cylinders, I sat down next to Eleanor and breathed for eight minutes.
I tapped her wrist. She was up and ready instantly, her eyes clear. Feeling intent and slightly light-headed, I went to the door and worked the knife back and forth.
“Turn off the light,” I said. I was using both hands.
She reached past my shoulder and snapped it off, and I pushed the cylinder all the way to the right and put my shoulder to the door. It opened slowly, and the two of us stumbled out into the kitchen.
“Oh, my God,” Eleanor said, paling. “What in the world could that be?”
“Hold your breath for a minute,” I said. “It's called Eau de Fluffy, and it's on our side. That means Dexter's here.” I pulled out the two handkerchiefs and poured the after-shave over them. I gave one to Eleanor, who promptly clamped it over her nose and mouth, and I breathed through the other. The smell of dead animal was so intense that it cut through the cheap scent. Dexter must have dumped half of the contents of the truck into the intake for the air conditioning.
We moved quickly across the kitchen and out into the corridor. I paused for a moment to check my orientation and then headed for the air-conditioning unit, my first landmark. Two or three people passed us, people who had been basemented apparently, but no one gave us a second glance; they had their own problems. Each of them had something wadded up and clutched over his face. We looked just like everybody else.
The big air-conditioning unit was pumping its evil-smelling lungs out. It was set at medium. I unscrewed the face plate of the control panel with the screwdriver on the Swiss Army knife and then turned the selector to high. Then I slipped the flimsiest of the blades under the rotor switch and angled it so it touched all the contacts, forging a permanent connection between the selector and the high contact. I snapped the blade off and left it there and then replaced the face plate. Short of crawling under it and disconnecting it, that thing was going to be murder to turn off.
“Someone's coming,” Eleanor said.
Another person fled down the hallway, coming from the direction we'd come in, and made a beeline for the TV studio. I recognized Listener Simpson, she of the Nordic blue eyes, pinching her nose closed and walking very fast. I wondered whether she'd been basemented, and if not, what she was doing down there. I debated backtracking her to see what I'd missed, and then looked at my watch again.
It was time for the Revealing.
We navigated the corridors, me checking my mental map at every turn and Eleanor holding her handkerchief screwed up to her face. We moved deliberately; now was not the time to get lost. Another person blundered past us in high gear, fleeing the stench. He bumped heavily against Eleanor.
“The manners these people have,” she mumbled into her handkerchief.
With the man in front of us, we could accelerate. He led us past my familiar little cul-de-sac and down the broad corridor toward the light. It opened onto a room that flickered under the bluish glow of fluorescent tubes. Four chairs were gathered around a desk. They were empty. Playing cards winked up from the surface of the desk. A cigarette burned in an ashtray next to a pair of spectacles.
“It's like after the neutron bomb,” Eleanor said.
A door at the far end of the room opened onto a flight of steps that led upward to street level. A metal door at the top of the steps had a single small square window at face level. Above it, a red sign said on the air.
The smell was much less pronounced here. When we opened the door and stepped into the TV studio, the air was relatively fresh. Not for long, though. The banks of lights were burning, the air conditioner was pumping away, and the stench from the effluvia Dexter had dumped into the air conditioning vent was beginning to breeze through. Already people were casting sidelong glances at each other and wrinkling their noses, shrugging their shoulders. One man lifted his foot and checked the sole of his shoe.
A tiny knot of people had gathered at the opposite end of the stage from the set, the people who had bolted from the basement. They were having a heated discussion. Guys wearing headphones turned and shushed them. They subsided guiltily.
I didn't see Merryman, which made sense, or Brooks or Barry either. On the set, Mary Claire was standing at the p
odium talking and Angel was seated, petting her kitten and waiting for fate to whisper in her ear. There were the usual masses of flowers.
The auditorium was packed. Not a seat was empty. A camera had been set up in the middle of the audience area to catch every nuance of the ecstasy of the ardent. This was live, to almost half a million people, according to Skippy. If things worked out, they were going to get quite a show.
Eleanor and I leaned against a wall, more or less out of the light. Mary Claire rambled on, throwing an occasional look at Angel. The smell was growing more pronounced.
“What now?” Eleanor said. “We can't just stand here.”
“For the moment we can. Everybody's busy.”
On her chair, Angel let her head loll forward. Now even Mary Claire smelled it. Knowing the camera was on her daughter, she looked past the lights with a questioning expression. Angel was past smelling anything.
“You inhabit a burned-out building,” she said, looking sightlessly forward. “You see out through scorched and rippled windows. You built the building, and you burned it. You built it day by day and room by room, and then you closed the doors to those rooms and built new ones. And behind you, the fire crept in and made everything black and twisted.”
“Not a bad beginning,” I said to Eleanor.
“I don't know what she's talking about,” Eleanor said peevishly. “Where is everybody? Those creeps, I mean.”
“Don't worry. They're going to come to us.”
“Well, goody. And how are we going to make them do that?”
She put the handkerchief to her face and breathed. It was really beginning to stink. People in the audience were fanning their faces with their souvenir programs. Angel's and Mary Claire's faces, printed in four colors, flapped back and forth across the room.
“Just wait,” I said.
A spasm struck Angel. She started to stand up. I held my breath. Then she slumped back into her chair and a broad smile crossed her face.
The Four Last Things (Simeon Grist Mystery) Page 30
