Burial (28 page)

‘Mr Hope? Mr Danetree? Is there anybody in?'

He did this three times before he was satisfied that nobody was going to answer. I suppose he was trying to impress us that this was a real respectable hotel where a guest's privacy was paramount

He held up his key and announced, ‘Pass key.'

We all nodded. He unlocked the door and opened it wide. ‘Mr Hope? Mr Danetree? It's Mr Rheiner, the manager.'

Still no answer. The room was completely dark, and very cold. We sniffed the air and again we smelled that strange flat herbal aroma — the sort of smell that belonged to the open air and to vast distances. Karen shivered.

Mr Rheiner switched on the light. We found ourselves in a room that was almost exactly the same size as Naomi Greenberg's dining room, except that it had been partitioned off to create a small bathroom and a closet There were two single beds, both of them covered in faded green candlewick throwovers. The walls were decorated with combed plaster, painted pale yellow. The lemon-coloured Venetian blind was closed tight.

‘See, what did I tell you?' said Mr Rheiner, holding out his hands. ‘Nobody here. Whatever those two gentlemen are doing in New York, they certainly aren't doing it here.'

I went to the closet and slid open the door. Inside hung three or four jackets, several pairs of slacks, and half-a-dozen
clean shirts. Four of the shirts were fifteen-and-a-half inch collar, the other two were seventeen. Mr Hope was obviously bigger than Mr Danetree, or else it was the other way about. There were five pairs of leather shoes on the closet floor, and one pair of canvas loafers.

‘Hey — what are you doing?' demanded Mr Rheiner, swinging around. ‘You can't go nosing in there!'

‘I'm sorry,' I told him, sliding the door shut. ‘Forgot where I was for a moment.' I wandered over to Amelia, and said, ‘Anything?'

Her eyes were glittering. She seemed extremely tense, highly charged up. ‘You bet there's something. Something very strong indeed — even stronger than the Greenbergs'.'

I looked around, and sniffed. I could still smell that herby smell, but I couldn't sense anything else. ‘I don't feel anything,' I said. ‘Nothing at all.'

‘That coldness?' she asked, her eyes narrowing in concentration.

‘Sure, I can feel that.'

‘That
pain
?'

I shook my head. ‘I'd like to say yes, but I really don't think so.'

Mr Rheiner shifted uncomfortably on his artificial leg. ‘Are you people quite finished now? Murder, for crying out loud. I ought to call the cops.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said. I took out my wallet and gave him two crumpled-up portraits of Honest Abe. We left the room and then endured the endless elevator journey down to the lobby.

‘I want to thank you for your help,' I said, as we left the hotel.

‘Do you want to leave a number or something?' Mr Rheiner asked me.

‘A number?'

‘You know, for when Mr Hope or Mr Danetree gets back.'

‘Oh, no. Thanks all the same. That won't be necessary.'

‘I'll tell them to keep the noise down.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘You do that.'

He watched us with deep suspicion as we pushed open the swing doors and stepped down into the street.

‘Let's get ourselves a drink,' I suggested. ‘I'm dying from a surfeit of spirits and a dire lack of booze.'

We crossed the street and went into a bar called La Boheme. It was painted all in black, with plastic ivy hanging from the ceiling and black-painted chairs and tables, and Frenchified squeeze-box music coming out from behind a four-foot model of a can-can girl. It was one of the few remaining beatnik hangouts from the 1950s, when beatniks wore berets and beards and stripey sweaters and said ‘like' in front of every sentence. We sat down in the corner and ordered a bottle of red wine.

It was then that Karen reached into her purse and produced a small red plastic-covered diary.

‘Look what I found,' she said.

‘Where did you get this?' I asked her.

‘It was right there on one of the nightstands. He didn't even see me pick it up.'

‘You should take up house-breaking for a living. You're a natural-born burglar.'

I ruffled through the diary with my thumb. It belonged to Andrew W. Danetree of Pocomoke City, Maryland. He had rounded, grade-school handwriting, and his diary entries were sparse and less-than-literate — but they turned out to be some of the most mysterious and fascinating reading I had ever come across.

While I was reading, Amelia said, ‘There's some force in that room, for definite. I could feel it. It's very cold, very
negative
. I don't quite know how to explain it, but in spiritual terms it feels like somebody's left the door wide open.'

‘The door to where?' asked Karen. ‘Or maybe I should ask
from
where?'

‘If I knew that, I think I'd know exactly what this disturbance is all about.'

I swallowed a mouthful of Paul Masson's worst. ‘Listen to this,' I said.‘“
Tuesday morning 4:25 pm stopped car outside of Salisbury & knew I had to go to NY. No reasnable explanation but I knew I had to
.' And here, listen, ‘
Told Billie it was business, guess if I try to tell anybody about it theyll think I've fliped
.”'

I turned over a few more pages. ‘“
Arived NY Thurs pm from Baltimore, taxi downtown. Had to locate the Belford Hotel on foot but here I am. Around 9 pm George H. a total stranger to me arrived from Brooklyn Center MN and said that he had experienced the same feeling too, right in the middle of work. He just had to come to NY whether he had liked it or not. He found the Belford by walking, too — experienced the same feeling of being drawn
.”'

‘How about
that
?' said Amelia. She opened her purse and took out her cigarettes. ‘Here are two men who didn't know each other. One came from the back end of Maryland and the other from less-than-beautiful downtown Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. But suddenly they both got the inexplicable feeling that they
had
to go to New York.'

‘Not only inexplicable but irresistible,' I said. ‘Our friend Andrew W. Danetree even lied to his wife so that he could come here. And these guys don't just get a
vague
feeling “go to New York.” Oh, no. These guys have a compulsion to go to the exact same hotel. They're
drawn
.'

Amelia lit her cigarette and said, ‘Read some more.'

‘Here we are. “
Spent most of Thurs nite trying to decide what made us both come here. We have nothing in common as far as we can work out. I was born in Baltimore and George was born in Cleveland, OH. My father was a painter and decorator, George's father was a captain in the Army. My background is German originally, George's family was probably Irish. I've been to NY before but George hasn't. So why are we both here? Why did we both feel exactly the same feeling
?.”'

I turned over the next and last entry. ‘“
Woke up early Fri
am feeling anxious & threatened. George reports the same. In fact he said he thinks we're going to die. He can't explain it. He says he had a nightmare about men and women being killed and mutilated, little children, too. Then he felt that there was a dark shadow standing close behind him, and he was too scared of it to turn around. I had a dream like that, too. My dream was so real I didn't know if I was asleep or awake. There was a shadow in the corner but it was much, much more than a shadow. It was watching me and it wanted to kill me
.”'

I closed the diary.

‘Is that it?' asked Amelia, and I nodded.

‘I have to see that room again,' she said.

‘Oh, yes? And how do you propose to do that? Especially with Rheiner the Whiner on the desk.'

Amelia looked at me with those challenging eyes — the same challenging eyes that had eventually led me to look for somebody a little less demanding. ‘Do you have a head for heights?' she asked me.

‘You're not expecting me to climb up a drainpipe?'

‘No, but the fire-escape from the Greenbergs' apartment and the fire-escape from the Belford Hotel are only about five feet apart. All we have to do is jump from one to the other, and we can reach the back window of room two-twelve.'

‘Amelia —' I warned her.

But Amelia said, ‘Harry, we can't turn our backs on this now. We can't turn our backs on Martin Vaizey, either. We got him into this mess and now it's up to us to get him out of it. The only way we can do that is to
prove
beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was possessed.'

‘“Shadow of a doubt,” hunh?' I said, sardonically. ‘And what if
we
get arrested for breaking in?'

‘Under the circumstances, Mr Erskine, I think that's a chance we'll have to take.'

I'm very uncomfortable with heights. I don't mind flying. I
don't mind tall buildings. But I hate looking over cliffs at the sea foaming about two hundred feet below me; or standing on twenty-fifth-floor balconies and looking down at the tops of people's heads and tiny cars and buses. For some weird reason, I'm always seized by this terrible urge to throw myself off — to find out what it's like to fall. They say that you're conscious right till the instant of impact The trouble is, very few spirits have any clear recollection of how they died, especially the ones who died violently, and so you can't really ask them what it was like. Or so Amelia told me. Maybe they
do
remember but it's just too harrowing for them to talk about it

The Greenbergs' window had been screwed into place, and it took us almost half-an-hour to free it. Eventually, however, I managed to prize out all of the screws and chip six or seven layers of dried paint away from the frame, and lift the lower sash two or three inches. When I couldn't force it up any further I pushed one end of Naomi Greenberg's ironing-board into it and knelt on the other end with all of my weight. With a shuddering groan the window lifted and I overbalanced onto the floor, knocking my head against the leg of the couch. I used some spectacular language.

We climbed out onto the fire-escape. Below us, the yard was shadowy and dark except for litter and broken glass. The fire-escape groaned as Karen stepped onto it, and we all stood stock-still and listened.

‘Are you sure it's safe?' asked Karen.

‘No,' I told her.

The Belford Hotel fire-escape had looked pretty damned close when viewed from the inside of the Greenbergs' apartment. But now I was out here, seventy feet above a junk-strewn concrete yard, it mysteriously seemed to have shifted itself two or three feet further away.

I climbed with some difficulty over the railing of the Greenbergs' fire-escape. By holding onto one of the rusty iron uprights I could then lean way out until I could grasp
the railings of the Belford Hotel fire-escape. That was the theory, anyway. In practise it looked way too far away; and way too high up; and way too goddamned dangerous.

I leaned further and further out. Below me I could make out the cinderblock wall that separated the Greenbergs' yard from the yard of the Belford Hotel. It was thickly encrusted with glittering slices of broken glass. I swallowed and looked up again. I didn't need to look down to know what would happen to me if I fell.

‘Harry, are you okay?' called Amelia, in a loud stage-whisper.

‘I don't know,' I admitted. My grip on the rust-scaled upright seemed to be even more tenuous than ever, and I felt the strength in my knees gradually washing away like mud being hosed off a sidewalk. I thought: Jesus, I'm not going to make it. I'm going to fall. I'm going to hit that glass-topped wall and it's going to cut me in half. My legs are going to end up in the Greenbergs' yard and my torso's going to end up next door.

‘You can reach it easy,' Amelia urged me. ‘You only have to stretch out two or three inches further.'

I closed my eyes for a moment and listened to the grumbling ambient roar of Manhattan's traffic; the sirens and the car-horns and the grinding of the trucks. I said a kind of prayer which involved God granting me the strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the balance of Blondin, and the bluff self-confidence of Teddy Roosevelt, if only on a purely temporary basis. Then I opened my eyes and focused on the fire-escape railing opposite and lunged for it.

And caught it. And swung across, barking my shin on the rusty cross-tie. And lost my footing, and swung around, barking my elbow and catching my ribs against the railing.

‘
Harry, be careful
!' called Karen, but I managed to snatch the railing and cling on tight.

‘Holy shit,' whispered Amelia. I don't know whether she was impressed or terrified.

I heaved myself over the railing and onto the fire-escape landing. My hands were smothered in rust, and my eyes were furiously watering.

‘Are you okay?' asked Amelia. ‘We're coming across now!'

I leaned over the railing and helped Amelia and Karen to climb over. Then all three of us stood on the fire-escape and looked at each other as if we'd achieved something really tremendous, like climbing Everest.

‘“I hope you realize that what we're going to do now is strictly illegal,”' I quoted.

Amelia was unfazed. ‘I think we're all fully aware of that. I think we're also fully aware that nobody else can do anything to save Martin but us. I think it's worth the risk, don't you?'

Karen glanced at me in that Bambi-admiring way of hers, and there was nothing else I could do but say, ‘For sure, of course I do. That's why I'm here.'

I took out the screwdriver and wedged it into the Belford Hotel window. The frame was pretty rotten, and when I levered the screwdriver upwards, splinters of wood dropped onto the fire-escape. But, miracle of miracles, the window was actually unlocked — and even though it took some strenuous pushing to slide it upward in its sash, it wasn't long before I had heaved it up enough for us to climb inside.