The bed was unmade and the room unoccupied. Her exquisite gown from the fundraiser was arranged with care on the wingback chair; her shoes were side by side in front of it.
Sheldon closed the door behind him, placed the towels on the dresser, and after double-checking that the bathroom was empty, he started to work fast.
Ben Adelman’s office contained a black vault with a polished silver wheel and a large handle. Inside, he kept cash and items that the guests wanted temporarily stored. Ben had shown it to Sheldon, Lenny, and the other freshman class of bellhops and busboys as part of their induction tour. Ben had used it as a prop to deliver a message: “There has been no crime at Grossinger’s in more than fifteen years, and we only had to reset the clock because of some pickpockets.” Ben told them not to be too proud. “There are thieves, assholes, and liars in the Jewish community just like in every other but”—he raised a finger—“they do not vacation at Grossinger’s.”
He then made a joke of naming the hotels where those people do vacation and everyone laughed.
The rooms, Sheldon learned, did not have personal safes. So, unless Mrs. Ullman was wearing her sapphire and diamond necklace to breakfast or had given it to Ben for safekeeping—which was very unlikely given that she had worn it all last night—it was here in this room. He simply needed to find it.
Where would an old woman hide her most valuable items on the presumption that no thief would ever—under any circumstances—look there?
Sheldon opened the drawer containing her underwear, closed his eyes and held his breath, shoved his hand underneath, and pulled out a fistful of bracelets, mismatched earrings, and the sapphire and diamond necklace.
A hole in one.
Sheldon opened the slit in his hat for the cardboard insert that gave it shape and slid the jewels in there, then he put the very heavy cap back on his head. He surveyed the room quickly for anything incriminating and then snatched up the towels. With a deep breath, he decided that a confident exit would be easier to defend than a sneaky one in case he was observed, so he swung open the door and strode with mock confidence into the hallway like a man on a mission.
Unseen and very relieved—though his heart was pumping enough to blur his vision—Sheldon stepped over to the vacant room across the hall and opened it.
The bed was stripped and the pillows fluffed and ready for the maid. The curtains were drawn to keep the room cool, and there was a hint of lemon and mothballs from the disinfectant used on the carpet.
Sheldon closed the door behind him. Using the bed as a sorting table, he removed his bellhop’s cap and poured the contents onto the white quilted surface of the mattress. For a mesmerizing moment, he allowed himself to be taken in by their radiance and drama and depth.
They made Sheldon think of his mother’s necklace. The aventurine. He remembered her promise that someday he would see the Far East and the wonders of Asia. What an impossible idea.
He heard sounds outside in the hall.
They passed.
Lifting everything and being sure to leave nothing behind, not even the backing of a single earring, Sheldon walked into the bathroom, removed the top of the toilet reservoir, and—with Neversink in his memory—plopped the gems into the water before replacing the top and turning off the lights.
* * *
Being a criminal mastermind was hungry work. Sheldon indulged in a hearty breakfast from the staff buffet and reported to his job at ten o’clock on the dot, where he found Lenny looking disheveled despite a long night’s sleep. With a wave of his hand, Ben sent the boys outside to stand by the front door and—when arrivals and departures were slow—open and close the doors for the guests.
Sheldon and Lenny had this synchronized by now, so they functioned as mechanically as an elevator.
“Why are you so tired?” Sheldon asked him.
“I think it was last night.”
“You talked bullshit for twenty minutes and rode a bicycle three miles. This knocked you out?”
“Somehow . . . yeah. I think being creative can knock you out.”
“Huh.”
By this time, the sun was high, the temperature was starting to rise around them, and the direct sunlight was scorching their faces that were already dark and healthy. It was going to be a hot one, a river day as they used to say in Whately. A lake day here. Lenny left to help an old bickering couple with their luggage, leaving Sheldon alone to hear the voice of Mrs. Ullman shout invectives at Ben Adelman, who stood with his hands raised defensively in front of him by the reception desk.
Mrs. Ullman had opened with a public display of outrage and demand for justice. Although Ben Adelman tried to urge her toward his out-of-earshot office, Mrs. Ullman was having none of it. She wasn’t unaware that she was causing a stir.
A small crowd gathered at a safe distance, mostly on Sheldon’s side of the glass. A woman had been burgled at Grossinger’s. Heads were going to roll and the state police and FBI were going to be summoned; did Mr. Adelman understand the implications of what was happening? The world as he knew it was over.
To Sheldon’s astonishment, Mel Friedman came down the stairs to the main lobby—Mel Friedman, a man rumored to have never seen the light of actual day or been submerged in a body of natural water.
Mel Friedman was a pale mountain of a man. He wore a black suit and suspenders with a thin black tie that was anything but a racing stripe. His feet threatened to burst out of his bluchers, and the tiny glasses on his eyes made him look menacing. Nero Wolfe would have been awed by this man.
Friedman spoke with a voice so deep and granular that he must have started smoking at five years old.
“Mrs. Ullman,” he said, his labored breath expended after two words.
The timbre of his voice—a low rumble threatening a storm or an earthquake—was enough to capture the attention of the lobby. The glass between the speakers and the onlookers clipped some of Mrs. Ullman’s higher notes, but it vanished as a barrier when Friedman spoke.
He wasn’t a loud man because he didn’t need to be. The effort he was making to speak was enough to hypnotize, but his staccato breathing made compound sentences impossible.
“The police have been summoned. The staff notified. We are mortified by this outrage. We will work”—he inhaled again—“diligently to resolve the matter. How may I serve you until then?”
Mrs. Ullman, realizing that she was in the company of a gentleman and a servant, calmed herself and spoke softly enough that neither Sheldon nor anyone else could hear any more through the closed doors.
Lenny appeared behind him. “What happened?”
Sheldon couldn’t risk anyone overhearing the truth, so he told Lenny what he’d witnessed without further comment. “I saw her last night before Miriam and I came to see you. She was decked out in jewels. I think someone nicked them.”
“That would be a drama.”
“I’ll say.”
Two police cars arrived minutes later. The town of Liberty was a mile off, and despite all the summer tourists, the town cops were not especially busy. Sheldon assumed Mr. Friedman had told them to be discreet, which would explain why they arrived without flashing lights and blaring sirens.
Lenny and Sheldon opened the glass doors for the four policemen, who entered with revolvers hanging low on their utility belts. In that instant, Sheldon sensed the enormity of what he was trying to do: be the kid who outsmarted a man who killed other people for a living.
Sheldon considered that maybe—just this once—he had actually gone too far.
But Sheldon still had time to walk away from all of it. Last night’s bicycles were on a rack a hundred yards away. He could collect his pay, pack what little he owned into his rucksack, and ride a bike down to the bus. If he got lucky on the timing, he could be twenty miles and a lifetime away in less than an hour. Lenny might be angry about it at first, and Sheldon would be reluctant to leave Miriam behind with thoughts of what might have been, but there was nothing actually pe
gging him to this story, to this moment, to these acts—acts that his father had never asked of him and probably wouldn’t tolerate. And his mother? She’d be ashamed he was wasting his God-given imagination on something so petty as crime or revenge.
The trouble was that none of this felt petty or criminal. It felt like justice and a restoration of a piece of the world, the only piece that Sheldon knew how to fix.
Inside by reception, the four policemen finally convinced Mrs. Ullman to end the show and take her concerns into the back office with Mr. Friedman and themselves. When the door closed, life returned to normal; the audience dispersed to gossip, and the stage was cleared.
* * *
The boys ate lunch. Lenny’s energy was back up, which made him more talkative. He had one more idea for a new act. He was about to explain it when Ben Adelman pulled them both aside and asked them to come into the dairy kitchen. Lenny looked at Sheldon, who shrugged unconvincingly enough to worry Lenny. Neither one of them had been into either of the two glatt kosher kitchens before. As Lenny and Sheldon stepped into that stainless-steel world of heavy scents and steam, they found about twenty of their colleagues already inside—which settled Sheldon’s nerves immensely.
“I’ll get right to it,” Ben said to everyone. “There has been a crime. We’re searching rooms for missing jewelry—including all of yours. One of our guests—a very rich and influential guest—has been burgled. No one has been burgled at Grossinger’s since . . . actually, I have no idea. It’s never come up. A missing wristwatch, a lost wallet, a bracelet slipping off at the lake. That’s been the most of it over the years. This, however, is felony-and-prison material. As we search your rooms, we are going to find things. Because I can absolutely promise you that we know every possible hiding place in your rooms. We know what’s under the mattress and inside the mattress. We know how to remove the fan in the ceiling in the bathroom. We know how to take off the backs of the radios. We know how to fish around in the toilets. We built this hotel. We know what’s in the walls and why every floorboard squeaks. We know what rooms you’re in, and you are not allowed to go back to them until we’ve been through them first. We have guards and trusted senior staff to ensure that. It’s checkmate. So, I’m giving you all one and only one way out, one time only. I’m going into my office. If anyone wants to tell me what we’re going to find before we find it, I suggest you come and tell me right now. If what’s been stolen is returned, I will tell our guest that it was returned anonymously. The thief will be fired, of course, but not handed over to the police. You’ve played Monopoly? This is the Get Out of Jail Free card. There’s only one in the deck. Meanwhile, go back to your stations. Do your jobs. The police will be watching the exits and the driveways and the bus stations and the train stations. We have counted the bicycles. We have instructed people not to pick up hitchhikers. If you did it, you cannot get away. You’ve got one hour to get those jewels into my hands. Any questions?”
No one had any questions.
There wasn’t a sound in the kitchen.
“Dismissed,” Ben announced.
* * *
The boys shuffled out of the kitchen, and it was Lenny who looked ashen. Sheldon couldn’t think of why, because Lenny hadn’t done anything. When they were in the lobby, Lenny pulled Sheldon into the men’s bathroom and—after checking that they were alone—whispered to Sheldon, “I know about your gun. They’re going to find your gun.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sheldon said.
“How can I not worry about it? It’s a loaded .45. They’re going to find it, and once the police find a gun in your room, we’re fired. Maybe worse but definitely fired. Probably worse.”
“They’re not going to find it.”
“Sheldon, you heard what Ben said. They know every spot to search and I believe him.”
“I believe him too, but they’re not going to find it because it’s not there.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s down my pants.”
The Master Plan
THE HOUR PASSED WITHOUT a confession. Sheldon knew this because he hadn’t confessed.
For the duration of their shift, they manned the doors and carried luggage down halls, their heavy trolleys occasionally clipping the uncollected newspapers in front of the guests’ doors. As Ben had threatened, the police and senior staff were searching rooms. So far, though, no one was looking in the unoccupied rooms. Maybe that would come later—he wasn’t sure. As Lenny once said, people’s actions only look inevitable in retrospect.
When their four o’clock break finally arrived, they were both hot and desperate to jump in the lake if only for a minute. When Mrs. Reiser—still on duty—nodded them off, they sprinted down the empty halls, and restraining themselves when guests appeared, they barged into their room, stripped, donned bathing suits as though they were competing with each other in a swim meet, and hauled ass to the lake knowing that, as sticky and buggy and heated as they’d become on their run, the lake would solve it all the moment they dove in.
And it did.
Sheldon burst past the young sunbathers and the old people who had waded into the water up to their knees to kibitz. Losing both sight and interest in Lenny, he dove deep into the water and was rewarded with a tempest of tiny bubbles that sparkled green and brown all around him.
In that moment, if only for a moment, he was free, free the way people speak of freedom but don’t really understand it. Under the surface with the world shimmering high above, he was free from time and responsibility, the past and the future, cause and effect. Free of light and dark, of want and fear.
It couldn’t last. We can hold our breath for only so long.
Sheldon burst to the surface like a German U-boat breaching the Atlantic. His muscles were taut, and the hot sunlight hit his skin and burned off the delicious chill. He stood in water to his waist, the lake tickling the elastic of his bathing suit.
With a dramatic flick of his head, Sheldon swept back his hair and scanned the beach for a girl to look at in the hopes she was looking at him. Instead, Sheldon saw him: the man with the mustache.
Without a care, and with time to kill, the man was sitting on a folding beach chair under an umbrella. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he wore cotton pants that were also rolled up at the cuffs. He was barefoot and in one hand was a cigar; in the other, a glass of lemonade. Sheldon stared at him and the man took no notice.
A splash crashed into Sheldon’s face when Lenny surfaced next to him. It did not break his focus. There, in front of his eyes, was the man himself. Not a memory. This was the actual monster who had killed his father, the monster with the cold eyes Sheldon saw that night in the rain on that quiet road south of Whately, a road that was part of home and should therefore have been safe.
The same mustache, the same angular chin, the same small black eyes.
What was he doing, the monster? Drinking lemonade, smoking, looking at girls, and basking in the sun like he was on holiday, and waiting for Mirabelle’s boyfriend to come back to his room so he could kill him—or worse.
He stood, a statue by the lake from a lost civilization, the young and living all around him frolicking without a care.
If Sheldon could break his paralysis, he could recover the .45 from under his towel on the grass and walk over.
“You remember me?” he’d ask.
“Who the fuck are you?” the monster would reply because . . . what else?
“Look more closely,” Sheldon would say without emotion—a guide. “Try to remember. The night. The rain. The car. We looked at each other before you turned the wheel. You knew there was a child in the car. You might even have seen my father and realized he looked nothing like Old Krupinski or his two sons. You turned the wheel anyway. Try to remember.”
“Yeah. I remember. So what? How the fuck did you surv—”
And then Sheldon would pump him full of lead. The Colt’s magazine held seven rounds and could store one in the chamber. At four
feet away, Sheldon won’t even need to aim. The bullets would shred the towel, and the cotton would fill the air like down from a chick. Blood—glorious blood—would arc from his chest, his neck, and his eyeballs. The dead meat of him would twitch on the chair, and the lemonade would fall into his crotch as a final humiliation.
“The question isn’t how I survived but why,” Sheldon would say to the corpse. “I survived so I could do this.”
Sheldon would toss the gun onto the body, wipe his hands on the remaining scraps of towel, and maybe even take a dip as a kind of baptism. Everyone would have run off screaming by then and he’d have the lake to himself.
Wouldn’t even look back at Lorenzo. Nothing left to see.
After that, of course, he’d be arrested and sent to prison and maybe get life or the death penalty, but standing there in the water with Lenny backstroking beside him, Sheldon knew there was a bigger play here. More than revenge and murder. A way to win. Sheldon was going to lock away his enemy for years, get rich, and be a local hero.
“Bang,” Sheldon whispered.
* * *
Mirabelle’s early infatuation with carrier pigeons had stimulated in Sheldon an image of messages being able to fly through the air, messages that could evade missiles and navigate through fog and smoke and noise. Messages that sought out their own homes and would travel through hell to reach their own beds.
It had been an odd thing to imagine, a momentary fancy, like watching a balloon lost to a breeze. And yet, the story of the Lost Battalion was vivid and alarming and tragic and curious for him the way it had been for Mirabelle.
“How did they know the message really came from Major Whittlesey?” Sheldon had asked her. “Maybe the Germans had got hold of Cher Ami and sent the message back telling them to stop the bombardment because it was working. Maybe it was a ruse.”
“A ruse?” Mirabelle had asked. She liked his choice of words sometimes.
How to Find Your Way in the Dark Page 24
