The Vaults

by Toby Ball

  Wincing with the pain in his knees and ankles, Poole pushed through the swinging gate and examined the registry. The most recent entry was from two weeks prior. The place did not get much traffic—at least officially. The names on the open page were not familiar, and he flipped back a page.

  Poole had expected to hear the nun’s footsteps returning, but either the door provided remarkable soundproofing or she moved quietly because the door swung open without warning and the woman reappeared with a younger, worn-looking nun trailing. Finding Poole on the wrong side of the divider, the woman scowled, walked to the desk, and slammed the registry shut.

  “Sister Prudence will take you back to Dr. Vesterhue.”

  Sister Prudence kept her eyes down, acknowledging Poole by looking at his stomach. She turned and pushed open the wooden door through which she had arrived. With an uncomfortable look at the older nun, Poole followed.

  They walked down a short, dim corridor and through a double set of steel doors, each of which Sister Prudence had to unlock and then relock once they were past. Then another corridor, though instead of walls, this one had bars. On either side, elderly men, in various combinations of gray institutional uniforms and tattered personal clothing, sat or lay or walked aimlessly. Probably fifteen or so of them were on each side, and Poole was struck by their seeming obliviousness to his and his companion’s presence. Indeed, they seemed unaware of each other’s presence. An ambient moaning sound accompanied the stench of sweat, urine, feces, and stagnant water.

  Sister Prudence walked with her head down, the spectacle long ago ceasing to affect her. They passed through a single steel door—repeating the ritual of unlocking and locking—at the opposite end of the corridor and were met with another sound entirely, a hymn as if sung by the angels themselves. They walked past an intersecting hall and then by an open door, the source of the singing. Poole looked in on a choir of girls, most not even in their teens, the older ones in habits, singing at the direction of a matronly nun. Poole stood transfixed in the doorway until one of the girls noticed him and then they all noticed him and the singing stopped.

  Poole caught the stare of one of the girls—one of the older ones, dressed in a habit. Something about her was familiar. From her look, this recognition was clearly reciprocated. Poole realized that the context had thrown him; he saw her nearly every day—one of the prostitutes who habituated the alley below his apartment. Confused, he backed slowly out of the room to find Sister Prudence waiting for him at the end of the corridor.

  “Who are they?”

  She didn’t look up. “Initiates.”

  Through another door and into yet another corridor; this one had solid-metal doors on both sides at four-yard intervals. Banging came from the inside of some, shattering the corridor’s silence. Sister Prudence led Poole to its end, where a door stood open. He stepped into an office that had clearly once been a cell.

  In the yellow light that filtered through a filthy window, a round man in a soiled white shirt sat behind a small desk. His small head was made smaller by thick sideburns that flowed down to his jawline. His face was gray and tired, but his eyes shone like those of a child who is awakened in the dead of night. He motioned for Poole to come in.

  “I’ll send the visitor down to your door when I’m done, Sister.”

  Sister Prudence gave a barely perceptible nod and drifted off.

  “You’re looking for Lena Prosnicki?” Dr. Vesterhue asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you are?”

  Poole was prepared for this. “Laszlo Prosnicki. Lena is my aunt.”

  Dr. Vesterhue did not look perturbed. “You’re lying. But that’s all right. Please sit.”

  Poole sat in a spare wooden chair that barely fit between the desk and the wall, his knees crammed against the desk.

  “Are you a detective?”

  Poole hesitated.

  That was enough for Vesterhue. “Of course you are. Someone has finally come looking for those poor women.”

  Women? “Is Lena Prosnicki here, Dr. Vesterhue?”

  “Here?” Vesterhue shook his head with a spiteful laugh. “No. No, she’s not here.”

  Poole sighed. It would have been too easy, finding Mrs. Prosnicki at the third sanitarium he visited. “Then why did you bring me back here?”

  “Oh, she’s not here. No. But I know where she is.”

  “You know where she is?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

  Something about Vesterhue’s eyes spooked Poole. They were too sharp for the fatigued features of his face. Poole took a quick scan of a row of medicine bottles without making any of the labels.

  “Where is she, Dr. Vesterhue?”

  “Let me tell you. Let me tell you where I met Lena Prosnicki. It was six years past or so. Maybe seven. At that time I was working at a place called All Souls’ Sanitarium. It was a place much like this, except that it was cleaner and the building was better kept.

  “I was one of the specialists there. It was called All Souls’, but it was run by the City. Back in the nineties the City bought it from the Church. It was a common place, no different than a dozen others in the City. Occasionally we would get a former city official in an advanced state of dementia and we’d give him special care. But for the most part, it was a typical institution.

  “Something like six years ago, a man named Smith came to All Souls’, and there was a meeting with the specialists and the administration. This man, Smith, told us that All Souls’ was going to be used for a special group of women. They were all suffering, he said, from extreme trauma, the source of which he couldn’t tell us. A consequence of this was that all of the current patients were going to have to be transferred to other institutions.

  “Needless to say, this was most unusual. The City’s sanitariums are, of course, overcrowded, and the prospect of essentially dispersing one institution’s patients to the others . . . well, it was a radical suggestion. Scandalous. But it wasn’t up for debate. We spent that month preparing and then transporting the patients throughout the City. I can tell you that the staffs at these receiving sanitariums were not happy with taking extra patients.

  “Regardless, when the last patient was gone from All Souls’, we were given two days off. When we returned, the women had arrived. Forty-two of them—a small number for an institution of that size, especially considering the numbers elsewhere. They were all heavily sedated. There were other new people, too. Police. There were a lot of police, or I guess I should say ASU. They mostly stayed at the entrance, but there were also guards posted at the stairway on each floor. They were armed.

  “This Smith fellow—I got the feeling that this was not in the normal scope of his work—returned, and there was another meeting. Smith told us that our job from this point on would be to administer the drugs at preassigned dosages and to monitor their behavior. He emphasized that we were not to change the dosages or attempt any type of talking cure. Medicate and observe. Nothing else.

  “It became apparent to me—and some of the others as well, though they had the good sense to keep their own counsel—that the women weren’t exhibiting any symptoms beyond those caused by the medications. I mentioned this to my supervisor, and less than a week later I was transferred here.”

  After a pause, Poole said, “They transferred you here because you thought the women’s only problems were from the medication they were taking?”

  “I thought that they would quite likely be perfectly healthy if they were just given relief from the drugs. I wasn’t alone in this belief, but I was alone in voicing it.”

  “What was the point? I mean, why were they drugged if there was nothing wrong with them?”

  Vesterhue’s bright eyes did not seem focused on anything in particular, giving the peculiar impression that they were focused inside himself or, possibly, on the past.

  “I really don’t know. I have thought about it often. There was something odd and sad about all those women. Unable
to function, and we were just giving them more and more drugs.” He sighed. “I just have no idea. None at all.”

  “Have you been back to All Souls’ or have you seen any of these women again?”

  Vesterhue’s eyes were back to focusing on Poole. “No. I have not left this building in three years. My quarters are in the basement. The City has given up on this place, on these people. No one comes here anymore. I have nowhere to go. So here I am. Me, the lunatics, and those lovely girls with their singing. Are you familiar with eschatology, Mr. Prosnicki?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  In the back room of Lentini’s, a bar in Capitol Heights and a meeting place for Red Henry and his cronies, Ian Block was breathing hard, cigar smoke flaring his asthma. Henry himself sat across the round table from Block and blew plumes of smoke at him. Also around the table were Bernal, who was drinking from a tall glass of whiskey on the rocks, and Altabelli, who had a beer and a cigar. They were discussing the bombings and Bernal’s good fortune, to date, in not being a victim.

  “Curious, Roderigo, that you should be spared the bombs so far. Very curious. You must feel very fortunate.” Altabelli had a thick Italian accent, and Bernal had difficulty figuring whether this comment was meant as a joke or not. He became defensive.

  “They have only bombed twice. One of us would have to be left out. So it is me? So what? Now I must wait until my house is attacked. I moved my wife and children to the country until this thing is finished. Besides, there is me and there is the mayor. He has not yet been bombed.”

  Altabelli reacted with either false or sincere shock. “You would accuse our mayor, our good friend Mr. Red Henry, of turning on his good friends and putting them in, ah, mortal danger?”

  Bernal had not meant this at all, and he looked nervously at Henry, who was relaxed and smiling. This came as some relief to Bernal, who did not want to upset the mayor during the best of times. Leaking to Frings had his paranoia spiking. Any undue attention, he knew, was an invitation for trouble.

  “No, no,” he protested. “You misunderstand the intentions of my comments. I mention the mayor only to show that because one has not been bombed does not necessarily make one the bomber.”

  The familiar pattern of two knocks, a pause, and then a third signaled that the visitor had official business with the mayor.

  “Come in,” Henry roared, the cigar still in the side of his mouth.

  It was Peja, looking as if he had eaten something rotten. The three men at the table looked to Henry. The look on Peja’s face turned Henry’s mood ugly.

  “What is it?”

  Peja was used to speaking in front of these men. “It’s the Poles, sir. They sent word. They are close to signing, but they caught wind of the strike and they’re concerned. They’re worried about having to deal with the unions.”

  Henry snarled at Bernal, who went pale. Then Henry, maintaining his calm, said, “Didn’t they hear that the strike was taken care of? Order has been restored without any concessions.”

  Peja nodded. “They do know that. We made sure to tell them. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “They think that might have been done for their benefit. They think that maybe you wouldn’t normally come down so hard on the unions.”

  Henry’s bald scalp was turning a peculiar red. “From your conversation with them, what do you think needs to be done?”

  “I think that it would help for you to show them that the unions aren’t a problem.”

  Henry nodded.

  “In a clear and personal way,” Peja continued.

  “I understand what you mean.” Henry looked toward Bernal now. “Who’s that little spic leading the strike?”

  “Enrique Dotel. Him and that woman.” Bernal was glad to be offering something positive.

  “Dotel.” Henry looked back at Peja, eyes blazing. “Get Dotel and get the Poles and have them at my office tomorrow morning at ten. They’ll see what happens when people push me.”

  Peja nodded and hustled out the door. Henry leaned back in his chair and rediscovered the cigar protruding from the corner of his mouth. He sucked on it and held the smoke in his partially open mouth, wisps of smoke rising like steam from a cauldron. Then he blew out the smoke in a long, steady stream toward Block, who started coughing again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Frings was exhausted and anticipated a long night ahead. Panos unlocked the night editor’s empty office so he could take a nap on the couch. The office had the newsroom odor of stale coffee and cigarettes, and the couch was too short. But the familiar hum of talking, typewriters, and the general bustle of the newsroom soon had him hovering in that irrational zone between consciousness and sleep.

  His thoughts were of Nora, but not of trying to understand her or their relationship. Instead it was like finding a collection of random photographs and from them taking away an impression of the thoughts, lives, and attitudes of the people in them.

  There was Nora, in a red, strapless dress, her hair dyed black, being introduced in the crowd at the opera house, standing and waving and smiling shyly. In his proximity to her, he felt the charge that came from the focused attentions of so many adoring people. He felt extraordinarily lucky to be the recipient of affection from this woman who was idolized by so many.

  There was the hollowness in his stomach when he paid an unexpected visit to her during rehearsals with a new orchestra to find her cozied up with the bandleader, David Winter, laughing as he whispered something into her ear. She had played it quite unself-consciously, breaking away from Winter and embracing Frings and kissing him provocatively. But as he stood around watching the rehearsal, he caught looks from Winter. Looks that seemed to say, “I’ve had something of yours.” Frings had been too timid to bring it up again with Nora, but the queasy feeling was hard to shake.

  There was Nora, sobbing irrationally to Frings during one of the few nights they had spent at his apartment. It was the first time he had seen her insecure side and experienced the privilege of being her protector. The cause of these episodes was never clear, and he eventually learned to provide general comfort, but on this first night he had desperately tried to find the source of her grief, only to find that it stemmed from her lack of certainty about anything. Nothing in life was certain, Frings knew, and he was comfortable with that—in fact, he felt it to be one of the encouraging aspects of life. But he didn’t tell that to Nora that night. Eventually he just held her until she fell asleep on his tear-soaked chest.

  Another memory: Nora at a gala banquet celebrating the fiftieth wedding anniversary of the famous conductor Eli Hodge. She was wearing an ivory cocktail dress and a tiara and was an absolute distraction to the men attending. She was also not talking to Frings, who knew no one else in attendance. It was a virtuoso piece of humiliation. Frings stood mute in her shadow as she flirted and gossiped and became the focus of the party’s considerable energy. Afterward, her lovemaking with him had been saturated with desperation, and he found, to his disgust, that he could not harbor any anger toward her.

  He and Nora out with a friend of hers, a movie actress named Greta Van Riepen, and her paramour, a dour, fey little man named Marco, who Greta claimed was some type of Italian royalty. It was a strange feeling to find refuge in conversation with Greta, whom he barely knew, as Nora and Marco chatted with troubling intimacy. It went as well as could be expected given the strained situation, until Greta glimpsed Marco rubbing Nora’s forearm with the tips of his fingers and the evening ended with Greta’s tearful departure, trailed, reluctantly, by Marco.

  As Frings had instructed, the office boy woke him at half past four. Frings gathered his notepad and several pencils and stashed them in the pocket of his trench coat. An envelope had appeared on his desk during his nap. He yelled for Ed, who arrived with an aggrieved expression that Frings ignored.

  “Where’d this come from?”

  “Some skirt dropped it off for you.”

  “Did you catch her
name?”

  Ed shrugged. “No. She was easy on the eyes, though.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Frings said sarcastically, causing Ed to stalk off in a huff. Frings was anxious to leave the office, but this could be another communication from the bombers, so he slit the envelope open with an ivory-handled letter opener that Nora had bought for him.

  “God damn it,” Frings said aloud when he saw the contents of the envelope—four high-quality prints of Bernal naked and in bed with a woman who Frings was fairly sure was not Mrs. Bernal. He slid the photos back into the envelope, hidden from the gaze of reporters that had turned his way in response to the outburst. There was a note, too: For your use. I’ll be in touch.

  This was exactly what he did not need. Bernal was potentially a gold mine of information about Red Henry and his circle. Now it seemed someone else was sweating him, and Frings was experienced enough in these situations to see the danger. He took a breath to calm himself. Frings was adept at putting problems to the back of his mind until he had time to address them. He didn’t have time for this now. He needed to get over to Puskis’s apartment building. He had a juju in his pocket that he would smoke on the way. It would take the edge off his anxiety.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  All Souls’ was on the edge of the Hollows, in a building that was once the main Catholic church before they built St. Mary’s in the Theater District. The imposing structure of brick and granite had a façade distinguished by two tall spires, and an arching stained-glass window looming over the main entrance. A small square in front of All Souls’ was concrete with a granite inlay in a geometric pattern that Poole had a notion was based on something in Italy (he had attended some classes while at State). Pigeons seemed to have taken over and the square was empty of people, save for four ASU officers smoking and chatting at the top of the stairs leading to All Souls’ entrance. Poole imagined it was a pretty easy assignment.