Floors #2: 3 Below (9 page)

This was not entirely true. The fact was, Ms. Sparks had been intercepting the letters for many months. It was all part of her diabolical plan.

Leo was in a daze. Seven
million
? Before he realized it, Ms. Sparks had come nearer and snatched the seven hundred thousand dollar note out of his hand.

“This will do just fine as a down payment, but I’m afraid you’re still six million, three hundred thousand short. And did I mention I was given this authority eighteen hours ago? Maybe I didn’t. You’re down to six hours, Leo Fillmore. Better get cracking.”

She leaned in so that her nose nearly touched Leo’s. Ms. Sparks could be an extremely close talker when she felt in charge.

“I almost feel sorry for you, having to run this hotel on your own. You’ll be better off without it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Leo said, but he was shaking. Could she really take the hotel from him, just like that?

She stood up straight and stared down at Leo.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not, it’s true. Eighteen of your precious hours have already passed. You have six hours to come up with the rest, and we both know that’s not going to happen.”

Leo started to back away, and then he had a thought.

“What’s Mr. Yancey got to do with this?” he asked.

“That’s none of your business!” she yelled. Ms. Sparks pocketed the seven hundred thousand dollar note and brushed a duck feather off her shoulder with a sour face. “And when I own this hotel, there will be no ducks. I won’t be running a zoo with monkeys and birds and who knows what else!”

Ms. Sparks didn’t know how right she was.

“Stay close by in case I need you,” she went on. “And don’t even think about leaving the hotel. I’ve assigned a guardian for you, since your parents are gone and everyone else in this hotel is stark raving mad!”

“A guardian?”

“He’s waiting for you in that hovel you call a room. He’s not to let you out of his sight. It’s one thing — the
only
thing — he happens to be good at. He knows how to keep track of someone when the need arises.”

Leo didn’t like the sound of a guardian one bit, especially one who had a weird super-ability to keep an eye on people. It would greatly complicate things if he and Remi were to make it back under the hotel and find the gear Merganzer needed. He hadn’t counted on all this trouble and wished his dad were there to help him.

Remi hadn’t returned in the duck waiter when Leo passed by, and he needed to get Blop from the basement room. The world felt like it was falling apart as he walked the steps down to the basement door.

“Ew,” he said, crinkling his nose. He hadn’t even gone inside and already he could smell Claudius. When he entered the basement, it reeked of wet cat fur. A small, unhappy-looking man was sitting on his bed holding a wadded-up cat leash in his hand. His skin was pale, he had a thick, drooping mustache, and there were large bags under his eyes. There was a frailness about him, like a soft summer breeze might knock him over.

“You must be the guardian,” Leo said. Mr. Carp was staring at the call center wall where Daisy, the mechanical shark who delivered commands from the hotel guests, was quietly resting.

“Claudius doesn’t like your shark,” Mr. Carp said. “It makes him nervous.”

“If it’s any consolation, Daisy makes me nervous, too. You never know when she’s going to wake up and deliver bad news.”

“I see,” Mr. Carp said. The cat meowed and rubbed up against Leo’s leg, leaving a trail of fur behind on his overalls.

“I’m Mr. Carp. And this is Claudius,” Mr. Carp said, pointing down at the cat.

“I see,” Leo said, for he had no idea what else
to
say.

“She asked me to keep an eye on you and the other one — Remi, is it? You’ll need to stay close by.”

“What happens if we don’t?” Leo asked, uncertain how much power Mr. Carp actually had.

Mr. Carp shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t really care.

“Will it be all right if I use the extra bunk while I’m visiting?” Mr. Carp asked, looking at Clarence Fillmore’s empty bed. “I think this is what Ms. Sparks had in mind. It’s very nice down here. Much nicer than my apartment.”

The basement was cozy for a maintenance man and his son, with its glugging water heater and hotel parts everywhere, but it was by any reasonable standard a
crummy place for a normal person to live. Leo could only imagine what sort of place Mr. Carp rented.

“You can stay — just don’t touch anything,” Leo said. He felt sorry for Mr. Carp, but at the same time, he was feeling a little better about things. There was no way this guardian would be able to keep track of Leo and Remi. Things were looking up.

Mr. Carp reclined on Leo’s dad’s bed and Claudius jumped up next to him. This, Leo knew, meant he’d have to burn the bedding when the cat was gone.

“Remember, no leaving the hotel,” Mr. Carp said, and then he closed his eyes. Leo didn’t move for a full minute, during which Mr. Carp began to snore lightly and Claudius coughed up a hairball that landed with a wet sound on the concrete floor.

“Pssssst!”

Remi had entered the basement and stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding his nose. Loopa was sitting on Remi’s shoulder, digging a monkey finger into Remi’s ear.

“Shhhh,” Leo whispered as quietly as he could. He walked to his bed, got down on his knees, and fished his hand around in search of Blop. A moment later, he and Remi were standing together at the door, the little robot safely deposited in Remi’s red jacket.

“That monkey is going to be trouble,” Leo said as he watched it run up and down the entire length of Remi’s body.

“Yeah, she definitely woke up,” Remi said. “At least she’s quiet.”

Loopa was an especially quiet monkey, but as Leo watched her leap off of Remi’s shoulder and land on the floor, he could see it was going to be difficult to control her.

“Who’s the smelly dude?” Remi whispered as he picked up Loopa and put her back in his pocket. He had Blop, who was still sleeping, in one pocket, and Loopa in the other. Leo rolled his eyes and started up the stairs, grabbing Remi by the arm and dragging him out of the room. In seconds they were near the lobby, which Ms. Sparks appeared to have left.

“Yeah, she’s in my mom’s old room,” Remi said, unable to hide his loathing. “I hope she’s not pulling down all the decorations.”

“Come on, I have an idea,” Leo said. He ran through the lobby with Remi close behind. On the other side was the Puzzle Room, where piles of puzzle pieces lay on a long wooden table. There were eight hundred thousand pieces. Mr. Phipps and Captain Rickenbacker were fond of trying to put it together, but had never gotten very far.

“I wish you could have seen it when Merganzer made the pieces fly everywhere,” Leo told Remi, smiling at the memory. “That was something else.”

He took a black key card out of one of the side pockets of his maintenance overalls. He knew how to work the card so the piles of puzzle pieces would fly into the air and miraculously settle into the finished picture they were meant to be. Merganzer had showed him how to do it.

“Only to be used when the time is right,” Leo said out loud. “Remember what I told you Merganzer said about the puzzle being double-sided?”

“Two sides,” Remi said. “I remember.”

After Merganzer had left last time, Leo had taken the puzzle apart again, leaving it in piles on the table. Putting it back together was an almost impossible task without the black key card.

“Should I do it?” Leo asked, his thumb hovering over the card, ready to swipe back and forth in the way that would send the pieces flying. He could put it together, build it so they could see the other side, a side they’d never seen before.

“I don’t know — does it seem like the right time?” Remi asked.

Leo couldn’t be sure, but there was one thing he
was
sure of: He
would
know when the time was right.

He put the key card away and shrugged. “I don’t think it’s time,” he said.

Remi was having some trouble keeping Loopa in his pocket. He kept having to hold her head down while her arms snaked out in a desperate attempt to free herself.

Just then, out of nowhere, the sound of a gigantic burp echoed through the lobby and into the Puzzle Room. It lasted a full ten seconds.

“Remi,” Leo said, concern rising in his voice.

“Uh-huh.”

“Where’s that bottle of Flart’s Fizz?”

Blop’s mechanical eyes began to flutter. The little robot was waking up. He was sitting in the jacket pocket where the bottle had been.

“I left it in the duck elevator,” Remi said. “I thought it would be safe there.”

“Lovely day, don’t you think?” Blop said, and Leo knew it was only the very beginning of a long-winded description of the sun, the clouds, the mechanics of a lovely day.

Remi and Leo ran back through the lobby, which was still empty, and arrived at the duck elevator. They were both hoping to find Captain Rickenbacker or Mr. Phipps. Even the other long-stay tenants, LillyAnn Pompadore or Theodore Bump, would have been survivable. But
they did not find any of those people trying desperately to open the second (and last) bottle of Flart’s Fizz. There was already one empty bottle sitting on its side.

“You took
two
bottles?” Leo asked, looking at Remi like he couldn’t believe his brother had not only tricked Ingrid into giving him one, but had also taken an extra!

“It wasn’t for me,” Remi said, pleading to be understood. “Honest. I thought we could each have, you know, one more big burp.”

“It was nice of you to think of me, but really, you shouldn’t have.”

Remi knew Leo was right. It had felt wrong tricking Ingrid, even worse slipping an extra into his pocket when she wasn’t looking. But seeing Jane Yancey with the last bottle of Flart’s Fizz was too much.

“Put that down, you little thief!” Remi yelled.

Remi should have known better than to cross Jane Yancey. She was spectacularly spoiled, prone to hitting first and yelling right after.

“Get back!” she yelled, hugging the last full bottle of Flart’s Fizz to her chest as she crawled all the way inside the duck elevator and started pushing buttons.

Leo calmly put his foot against the door so it wouldn’t close and crouched down next to her, blocking the way out.

“Hi, Jane. How’s it going?” he asked. It was best to talk calmly to a cornered monster.

“You can’t have it!” she yelled. “It’s mine! I found it fair and square!”

“You’re not even allowed in there, you little creep!” Remi said. He’d gotten down on one knee, reaching in toward the bottle. “Do you have any idea how rare those bottles are? And you already drank one without even asking!”

“I’ll tell my dad, I will,” she hissed. “He’ll be very interested in this stuff, whatever it is. Best burp EVER!”

“I know, right?” Remi said. For a brief instant he was overcome with excitement about the fizzy drink and wanted to talk about it and remember what it was like and . . .

“Remi, please,” Leo said. Then he turned to Jane. “We really do need you to give it back. How about a dollar?”

Jane was trying desperately to open the second bottle with her hand, but it wasn’t a twist-off. She laughed in Leo’s face — money meant nothing to Jane Yancey, she had all she needed and more — and then she put the end of the bottle in her mouth, which apparently was how she’d gotten the first one open.

“Get your disgusting mouth off my bottle of Flart’s Fizz!” Remi yelled, lunging for the bottle. Jane Yancey
screamed — and, boy, could she wail when she wanted to. Leo could see the entire situation was rapidly spinning out of control. He didn’t know what else to do. There was only one thing he could think of that might get her to stop screaming at the top of her lungs, ruining everything.

“How about a monkey?” Leo said. “Would you trade me the bottle for a monkey?”

Remi looked at Leo like he’d lost his marbles. He was so shocked, it turned him speechless. His face, the color of a perfectly toasted marshmallow, turned two shades whiter.

“You did not just say that,” Remi finally said.

Jane Yancey had gone silent, taking the end of the bottle out of her mouth. There was slobber all over the bottle cap, but it was still on. She hadn’t managed to pry it off with her teeth.

“
You
have a monkey?” she said. “What do you take me for, a complete idiot?”

But there was doubt in her voice. It was, after all, the Whippet Hotel. It was full of surprises. Only seconds ago she’d produced the miracle burp of a lifetime. Maybe there was a monkey somewhere nearby.

Blop began talking about monkeys. Loopa, who had been scared and therefore very quiet up to that point, peeked her head out from the other red jacket pocket.

“There are two hundred sixty-four different species of monkeys,” Blop said, but Jane Yancey was suddenly and irreversibly mesmerized by Loopa. Blop went on and on about marmosets and night monkeys and howlers and spider monkeys.

“Put a sock in it, robot,” Jane Yancey said, reaching toward Loopa. Loopa made a ridiculously cute gurgling sound and Jane Yancey cackled like a hyena.

“I must have it! I
will
have it!” she said, laughing.

“The monkey for the bottle and your complete silence,” Leo said. Remi could not believe his ears. Was Leo really giving Loopa away? It couldn’t be. He was heartbroken.

Jane Yancey looked at the bottle of Flart’s Fizz and thought about how good it had tasted, better than anything she’d drunk in her life. And that burp. That glorious burp! It was pure magic.

Still, it was a monkey, and not just any monkey: a tiny, goofy, silly monkey, small enough to put her doll clothes on.

“Here,” she finally said. “Take your stupid bottle of pop. But first give me the monkey.”

“There’s just one rule,” Leo said, “and you have to promise me you’ll follow it.”

“I hate rules,” Jane said.

“It’s just, well, this is a rare monkey.
Super
rare. So rare that there are certain people in this hotel who might want to take her from you.”

“Ms. Sparks?” Jane Yancey asked. She was starting to come around.