Box Nine

by Jack O'Connell

  “The big fact that you have to know,” she says to Woo, “is that Cortez is the King of Bangkok.”

  Woo nods, feeling hip, feeling like he’s ready to slide into the swing of things. “He’s the top dog,” he says.

  Lenore raises her voice. “That’s not what I said. I said he’s the King of Bangkok. Inside Bangkok, he’s the King. But Bangkok isn’t the whole world, is it? There’s a lot more terrain to this planet than Bangkok Park, right?”

  Woo is at once cut back to a fumbling humility. He goes quiet and Lenore, content in his silencing, begins her story.

  • • •

  Cortez’s history begins the day he got off the bus in Quinsigamond. Logic and the nature of life tell Lenore that he obviously came from somewhere, that there is more information, probably stored somewhere south of the border, in bulging police files in Colombia or Bolivia. But that ancient history is incidental.

  Lenore became involved the second that Cortez’s snakeskin-booted heels touched down on the asphalt of her city’s Greyhound station. She wonders if, on that particular day, she felt a change in the atmosphere, noticed some unexplainable rise or dip in the barometric pressure around her body. At the time there would have been no way to ascribe a relevance to it, but today, she swears, she can feel the flux in the air when Cortez’s Jaguar gets within a block of her.

  At first Cortez was just one more player in the overload of aspiring brokers feeding off the decay of the Park. Now, his displaced contemporaries will say he had no blueprint, that he tried a little of everything—pimping, extortion, the smack trade. Lenore finds this very hard to believe. She thinks it’s an impression that grows out of the fact that Cortez is so good at thinking on his feet in continually changeable, pressure-filled situations that associates start to decide this indicates a lack of long-range planning skills and backup contingencies. Lenore thinks that the two virtues are not mutually exclusive. She finds them both in herself.

  Whatever his endeavor, Cortez started cornering markets within his first six months as a Park resident. His unique intelligence and personality and ability to judge character combined with an innate sense for reading the marketplace that would have done just as well on Madison Avenue or Wall Street.

  Cortez reaped huge cash profits in his first year as a “no-holds-barred entrepreneur.” Like an old-time Yankee baron with a sense for building solid and conservative foundations, Cortez plowed big chunks of his income into real estate. Virtually every piece of land was for sale in Bangkok Park and Cortez seemed to gobble most of it up. At the Quinsigamond Registry of Deeds, his company, Rayuela Realty Trust, vied with an ancient Boston banking conglomerate for most tides recorded in the shortest period of time.

  Ironically, Cortez considered his finest acquisition that first year to be the old and decrepit Hotel Penumbra. He loved the look of the place, its weird, monstrous facade. The building had been put up back around 1900 by an architect with a sense of the threatening and the theatrical and a strange love for a mutant design that was part High Gothic and part art deco.

  Cortez made the building his home and business headquarters and then he went a step further. He set about to invest the old hotel with his own character, to will it into a perfect representation of his personality, a signpost of his Olympian goals, a chronic, granite reminder of his very presence and force on the landscape. He wanted a dark and frightening shrine to his power, his essence as defined by real estate.

  The transformation turned the hotel, already something old and interesting, into something bizarre, a surreal stationary carnival injected into the heart of Goulden Avenue.

  Now, as before, the building sits five stories high. But in clearing away a century of grime and dust, it came to look taller, to stretch wider on the block. The outer face of the building is an illogical mix of marble, sandstone, granite, and a copper that oxidized within the first ten years and settled into a sea-green color. The whole ark is a maze of jutting angles, most set at forty-five degrees. The main entrance is a row of revolving doors, which means that luggage must be brought in through a side door. Above the entrance is a flat awning-overhang made of hand-scrolled copper and electrified with hundreds of glowing bulbs. It’s held up above the sidewalk by four sets of enormous linked chains that stretch up into the air like the fat lines of a whaling ship, then mount into the side of the hotel in black iron sockets that look like portholes. Three sets of windows run up the front of the building, the middle set recessed slightly and the set on either side protruding like enclosed medieval king’s balconies, ornamented with tiny copper catwalks with iron-bar railings. The top of the building rises up with two towering octagonal spires with hideous gargoyles running around their bases. Lightning rods with silver-ball tops rise out of the spires and Cortez has made them into twin flagpoles from which he flies huge flags bearing his family crest. At night, he illuminates them with unreal blue-white beams from a row of antique, Broadway-style klieg lights mounted on the roof.

  At midnight, the Hotel Penumbra looks like some curse-tinged, truly haunted fortress, pulled from the soaked and wormy earth of an Eastern European mountain community and transplanted, intact, into the drug-crazed terrain of Bangkok Park.

  The inside of the hotel, however, is a different story. No one but Cortez knows for sure, but there are rumors that he’s dumped anywhere from two to five million into restoration and renovation. On the first floor, where the Standish Lounge and Supperclub were once located, Cortez has modeled, out of a gutted cavern, the now-infamous Club 62, by many estimations, the darkest, hippest, most dangerous nightspot in the Western world. Club 62 is more like an upscale, outlaw flea market than a nightclub. Everything is for rent or sale. What is not readily available can be procured and delivered within an hour.

  The interior walls of Club 62 are high-quality red brick and mortar, painted a cool white. Cortez has had them customized so that a continuous stream of red-dyed rainwater runs down the walls into a sewer grating. One regular is said to have thought the walls looked like “an autopsy-room floor turned sideways” and that this is the exact effect Cortez was going for. Certainly, the furnishings and decor do not emphasize comfort. Though there is no need for them structurally, huge black iron beams with endless rows of rivets and studs run through the air. The tables and seating follow this same iron-and-steel/heavy-industry motif with enormous I-beams laid down as benches and small, mock conveyor belts mounted here and there as cocktail tables. Lighting comes from a continuous row of industry-sized, high-intensity, neon-green bulbs trapped inside wire-mesh caging high up near the ceiling. It has been said that the mixture of the green light playing off the rushing blood-water of the walls can give the place a Christmassy feel, but Lenore finds this hard to believe.

  The cocktail waitresses are all Amazons. There are minimum height and shoulder-span requirements for hiring. Their uniforms consist of black leather motorcycle pants with red stripes down the side, neon-green suspenders, and black, pointy, steel-toed boots with odd cowboy spurs mounted on the back. The hostess is signified by the wearing of a black miner’s hard hat with inset flashlight.

  The floor of the club is simply a bed of crushed gravel. This makes for a constant cushing background noise.

  It is rumored that people disappear into the bowels of the club for weeks on end, emerging with skin paler than the dead and eye pupils so small they can barely be seen.

  It is rumored that the drugs of choice are a synthetic designer amphetamine called Opie, short for Oppenheimer, and an antique hallucinogen called Rucksack Ho. It is rumored that these goods are sold openly, by waitresses moving from table to table with large trays supported by a thick strap around their necks, old-time cigarette-girl style.

  It is rumored that on Tuesday and Thursday nights, orgies of unspeakable shape and length are regularly scheduled and executed, and that often Cortez himself will direct the activities, barking out acrobatic instruction, from a hidden balcony, with an old-fashioned police bullhorn.

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nbsp; On the second floor of the Hotel Penumbra is Cortez’s brothel, what he calls the Secretarial Pool, and what customers know as the Deer Park. It is rumored to house a dozen girls in a blend of royally pampered Euro-luxury and subtle Oriental beauty. It is rumored to capitulate to any fantasy a customer can call up or refund 110 percent of your money. It is rumored that no one has ever requested the refund.

  On the third floor are the living quarters of Cortez’s staff. There is Mingo Bouza, newest member of the group, chauffeur, valet, and companion. Cortez likes to laugh often, to be entertained. Mingo is something of an amateur stand-up comedian. This was his main qualification for the job.

  Next to Mingo’s suite is Jimmy Wyatt’s. Jimmy is the hotel’s resident muscle. He lives on steroid injections, raw eggs, and a mystery liquid that he keeps in a silver pitcher next to his bed. Jimmy was born and raised by a schizophrenic ex-nun just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. He killed his first man in a dispute over who would purchase the last newspaper at a drugstore. He was sixteen years old. He can bench-press over 250 pounds, run the mile in 4.4 minutes. He spent three years in Korea sleeping under burlap, perfecting a martial art that has yet to be named. Jimmy is a mute, having had his tongue cut out during the ’76 prison riots out at Spooner Correctional. Jimmy considers himself something of a natty dresser, which Mingo finds a riot. All of Jimmy’s clothes are made of spandex or leather. Jimmy serves as Cortez’s personal bodyguard and, rumor has it, traveling assassin.

  The last of the third-floor trio is Max, a local kid, about fifteen years old, born in the middle of the Park, a native in every sense of the word. Max is the houseboy, the gofer, the collector of loose ends. He never seems to sleep. He has lived in the hotel for over three years now. He’s all dark skin and thin bones and a wild head of bushy jet-black hair that tends to wave, like some southwestern American Indian. Max dresses in army fatigues and high-top sneakers. He takes a chronic but good-natured ribbing from the Secretarial Pool. One rumor has it that Max is Cortez’s son. Max is not sure one way or the other. So far there is no rumor about him being the Widow’s snitch.

  The top two floors of the Hotel Penumbra make up Cortez’s penthouse residence. They are connected by an authentically restored gilded-cage elevator. The rumor is that most of the renovation money went into the top of the building. Cortez has more square footage in, say, his bathroom than most of the houses of immigrant families of Goulden Ave. The rumor is that Cortez went through two architects, three interior designers, and an uncountable number of contractors before he got his home the way he wanted it. He lives alone. Very few people have seen the inside of his place, the Sanctuary, as he calls it. The regulars at Club 62 play games, making up details about the place. They say his kitchen has a separate electrical system for the sea of cutting-edge appliances, that his master bedroom could house a regulation running track, that his closet space would throw Princess Diana into a rage of envy. Though no one can come up with any logistics, the favorite notion is that his living room floor somehow retracts into the walls to reveal an Olympic-sized pool.

  Cortez seems to be spending more and more time within the walls of the Sanctuary. The latest rumor is that he’s got some kind of special library up there. That it takes up most of the top floor. That he’s had the whole place fireproofed. That little Max is the only one to have seen it. And that it consists of either the world’s most extensive collection of pornography, secret histories, or occult material.

  For some reason, Lenore finds it easy to picture Cortez as the sole figure in a huge, dim, exotic library, perfectly postured in an ancient, uncomfortable wooden chair for hours, days, head bent slightly and hovering six inches above the pages of some enormous and weighty book, an atlas or an original philosophical treatise from fifteenth-century Italy, all worn-out purple leather and red vellum and smelling of oceans and the deepest caves of Europe, with all the words hand-printed, calligraphied, and illuminated by obsessive, virginal, paranoid monks.

  She can picture Cortez unmoving, dressed in a floor-length maroon robe with loose cowl hanging down the back, subsisting on cold bitter coffee, his hair becoming tangled and matted, sweat breaking from the hairline to the eyebrows, his lips opening and closing, twisting in new ways to learn an unfamiliar language, conquering yet another risky frontier—

  • • •

  “The irony is,” says Woo, “that I actually have family in Bangkok. The real Bangkok. In Thailand. Distant cousins. Some branch of my mother’s side of the family.”

  “Just one crazy world,” says Lenore, keeping her eyes on the back door of the hotel.

  “I don’t know Mother’s side very well, actually. Very diverse. Very spread out. Father’s people were from Hong Kong. He was something of an electronics wizard. He emigrated in 1935 with his new bride.”

  “Adventurous guy.”

  “He did well. Classic story from that generation. Poverty to the good life in thirty years. He ended up the head of Research and Development at Yen Labs.”

  “Still alive?”

  “He died two years back. My mother’s alive, though. She’s at the McLaughlin Home. Fine place.”

  Lenore says nothing, but lets out a long sigh. Her speed kick is fading a little and she knows that within the hour her nerves are going to get a little raw.

  “How about your people?” Woo asks. “Your parents?”

  Lenore stares straight ahead, tries not to blink. “Both gone.”

  “Your father was a mailman.”

  “For about forty years. Ma kept the house. They were nuts for each other. One of those deals.”

  “I like the way you talk,” Woo says.

  “Shut up,” Lenore says.

  • • •

  The Jaguar rolls into the garage. After a few seconds Mingo and Max emerge. There’s no sign of Cortez. Lenore figures he took the private elevator straight up to his place. She watches as Mingo pulls a wad of bills from his pocket, peels off a couple, and hands them to Max, talking the whole time. She wishes she had brought a high-powered lens and the ability to read lips. She thinks for an instant about asking Woo if he can read lips, but stays quiet.

  Mingo steps back into the garage and the door rolls closed in front of him. Max pushes the money into his army-pants pocket and sets off down Goulden Ave, probably, Lenore guesses, to pick up some groceries or household supplies. She waits until he’s out of sight, a good block up the road, then cranks the Barracuda and pulls out of the alley.

  They pull to the curb slightly in front of Max and in her side-view mirror she can see him raise his bushy eyebrows. She lowers her window, waits a second for him to approach the door, and says, “Maxie, honey, I’ve missed you like crazy.”

  “What a wiseass,” Max mumbles, and climbs in the back.

  On the ride up to the penthouse, the elevator speakers play a scratchy rendition of an old tango. Cortez concentrates, tries to recall its name, gives up when he reaches the top and the doors slide open. What he wants, more than anything, is solitude, to be isolated in his library, to leave word with Jimmy Wyatt that no one is to come upstairs under any circumstances. That when he wants food or tea he’ll buzz the kitchen and Max can leave a tray outside the library door.

  It’s not that he wants a long stretch of time to read. His capacity for reading is diminishing daily. Not long ago, he was a recordbreaking reader. Often, he consumed a book a day, first page to last in one sitting. It’s been almost a month since he finished a book, a novel, written in an archaic Uruguayan dialect. It had started off like some kind of occultish mystery story, but changed at some point. There were passages he couldn’t completely understand, and he got in the habit of supplying his own action at those junctures. It was the story of an indentured slave and his master, the descendant of European adventurers. They’re the last inhabitants of an ancient family castle in some unnamed mountain region. The master is growing decrepit. He’s the last of his bloodline and with each passing day it seems his cruelty toward his loyal servant gr
ows geometrically. Cortez had the most difficulty with the last chapter in the book. It appeared to be a dream sequence, but there was no way to be sure. So he assigned his own meaning to the strange words on the last five pages, and turned the book into a revenge tale with the abused servant finally gaining the upper hand, avenging the pain of all his slave forebears, and in a bloody orgy of repressed hate set free, severing the old aristocrat’s head and rolling it down the most jagged face of the mountain.

  Cortez wishes he were better with languages. He’s not bad, but he yearns for a natural facility, an innate talent that would give him foreign tongues with the ease of a reflex. What he really needs is time to concentrate, hours of uninterrupted study.

  He lets himself into the library, unbuttons his double-breasted jacket, pushes a hand halfway into his pants pocket. He starts to walk around the outer edge of the room, next to the walls of empty shelves. He pulls an index finger across the length of the waist-level shelf and draws a line in a deep layer of dust. It’s not the staff’s fault. Everyone, even Max and Mingo and Jimmy Wyatt, has strict orders to stay out of the library. The library is for Cortez alone.

  Months ago, the shelves were loaded, crammed with books, mostly fiction, a surprising number of whodunits. Packing all the volumes into those reinforced cartons took days, but Cortez did it by himself, late at night, looking blandly at each novel for just a second before laying it in its box.

  He’s not sure why, but he has always held the belief that a successful man must own a library. Where did this gauge of status come from? He can find no trace of it in any books and movies he was exposed to as a kid. It’s doubtful it came from his mother or any of the dozen aunts who moved in and out of their small homes during his youth. It must be something that sprang, independent, into his still-forming brain. Just some weird, random spasm of development.