Creepers

38

The bullet snapped past Balenger's head. He felt the shock of air it displaced, heard it slam into the wall behind him.

"Jesus!" Vinnie said.

"It didn't come anywhere close," Tod said.

"My ears!" Mack put his hands over them. "For God's sake, why didn't you warn me? They're ringing like crazy!"

So were Balenger's, but not so much that he didn't hear another rumble.

"Don't try to be a hero," Tod said. "Otherwise, that 'now' thing you talked about won't last much longer.

"All I want is to walk out of here."

"We'll see how this goes. So far you've been useless. Where's the vault?"

"What's that noise?" Mack asked.

"The ringing in your ears."

"No," JD said. "I heard it, too. A rumble."

"Thunder," Balenger said.

They stared toward the ceiling.

"Thunder?" Vinnie shook his head. "There aren't any thunderstorms predicted. Only showers around dawn. The professor said…" Vinnie's voice dropped. "Professor?"

No answer.

"Professor?" Vinnie started toward the sofa.

"The crowbar!" Tod warned, aiming. "Put it down before you come near us!"

Vinnie dropped it and crossed the room. He passed Cora, who continued to hum in shock, and reached the professor, whose head was back, his eyes closed.

Vinnie nudged him. "You told us the weather report was for showers around dawn."

Conklin's eyes remained closed.

"You told us-"

"I lied," Conklin said wearily.

"What?"

"Next week, the salvagers are coming. I needed all of you to help me scout the building tonight." Conklin breathed. "Tomorrow night, after we showed Frank how to get into the building and into the vault…" Conklin took another breath. "He was supposed to return and take as many coins as he could carry. Tonight and tomorrow night. That's when it needed to happen."

"You prick."

"I estimated that we'd be out of here before the storm arrived." The professor's bearded face was ravaged with regret. "Apparently I was wrong."

"What's the big deal about a storm?" JD wanted to know.

"Getting out of here," Vinnie said in despair. "Depending on how hard it rains, the tunnels might be flooded."

"Right now, you've got bigger problems than worrying about a flooded tunnel," Tod said. "We'll just have to wait and get more acquainted."

"Yeah," Mack said, putting a hand on Cora's shoulder. "We'll just have to find ways to pass the time."

She was on the floor now, sitting bent forward with her arms around her raised knees and her head braced on them. She didn't seem aware of Mack's touch.

"Leave her alone," Vinnie said.

"Make me."

Balenger tried to distract them. "The vault."

"Your great idea didn't work out, smart guy," Tod said. "The wall on that side sounds hollow, too. If this stuff about the vault and the gold coins turns out to be bullshit…"

Balenger examined the holes in the wall. He went over and peered into the dark bedroom, then studied the doorjamb and the space between the rooms. "Looks like five inches wide. Bob, are you sure the diary didn't say it was a wall safe?"

"A vault," the professor murmured through his pain. "That was what Carlisle always called it."

"Then we're wasting our time on this wall. It's too narrow." Balenger stared at the long living room wall, at the metal shutters and the metal door between them. "No room for the vault there, either."

He tugged open the closet door and saw coats and suits, all in a style that suggested the 1930s. Their smell was nauseating. He yanked the garments off a wooden rod and hurled them across the living room, then entered the closet and pounded on the wall.

"Normal. That leaves the far bedroom wall, or maybe the bathroom."

"Careful, hero," Tod said.

"I'll need light in the bedroom." Balenger picked up the crowbar. "Vinnie, help me."

With an angry look toward Mack, whose hand remained on Cora's shoulder, Vinnie followed Balenger into the bedroom. Their headlamps revealed a lacquered black dresser with red trim, a chrome strip at the bottom and a circular mirror on top. A reading chair had the same black with red trim.

So did the bed, but Balenger hardly noticed as he and Vinnie shoved it away from the wall. Standing in the doorway, Tod and JD aimed their flashlights as Balenger pounded the hollow-sounding wall.

"Black and red," Tod said. "Who did Danata think he was, the Prince of Darkness?"

"I'm sure all the men he shot believed it," Balenger said.

Vinnie took an ashtray off a nightstand. "I'll check the bathroom."

As Balenger swung the crowbar against the wall, he heard Vinnie pounding the wall in the bathroom. Even at a distance, the hollow sound made it obvious nothing was behind the wall. At last, Balenger ran out of surface. He stepped back, breathing heavily, scanning his headlamp along the holes he'd made. "Nothing."

He started back toward the living room.

"Drop the crowbar!" Tod warned from the doorway.

Throwing it onto a chair, Balenger entered the living room.

"Bob!" He roused the professor. "Try to remember the diary. The vault isn't here. Did the diary mention any other place the vault might be?"

"All bullshit," JD said.

"Danata's suite," Conklin said. "The ceiling, maybe. The floor. Leg hurts."

Balenger stared at the duct tape around it. The tape remained gray, no blood leaking, but the leg was alarmingly swollen. He should have been in an ambulance a half hour ago, Balenger thought. "Does it throb?"

"Constant pain. Sharp."

Maybe I left a shard in there. Balenger put a hand on the professor's forehead. "He's got a fever."

"Gosh," Tod said.

Mack was still rubbing Cora's shoulders.

"The first-aid kit," Balenger said. "We need to give him more painkillers."

"We?" JD said. "All we care about is-"

"All right, all right, if I can find the vault, will you give him the painkillers?"

"Sounds like a deal to me."

Balenger thought frantically. "The ceiling's out of the question. Danata would have wanted easy access. That leaves the floor. Vinnie, get the crowbar. Maybe there's a trapdoor."

Vinnie didn't answer. He was staring at Mack's hands on Cora's shoulders.

"Vinnie! The crowbar!" Balenger shoved furniture away, pulled up a rug, and knelt to study the floor. The strips of hardwood showed no obvious gaps. "We need to clear the room, move all the furniture."

Balenger's headlamp swept along the first wall and the holes he and Vinnie had pounded into it. The beam illuminated the darkness behind the holes. He shivered with understanding. "There's a lot of space behind that wall." He aimed his headlamp through the biggest hole. "A hell of a lot of space."

He shoved his gloved hands into the hole and tried to pull at the plaster's edge, but with his wrists taped together, he couldn't manage a grip. "The crowbar! Where's-"

Abruptly, Vinnie was next to him", ramming the crowbar into the hole. He pried out a chunk of plaster. "There's something in here!"

"The vault?" JD asked quickly.

Vinnie pried away more plaster.

"No! Not the vault!" Balenger threw debris onto the floor. "It looks like…"

"A staircase!" Vinnie said.

"What?" Mack moved away from Cora.

"A circular staircase!" Vinnie pried at the wall. Balenger kept throwing the plaster away. They soon had an opening large enough to squeeze through.

The roar of a shot made Balenger flinch. A bullet slammed the wall to his right.

"Stay," Tod ordered. "Nobody's going in there till that hole's a lot wider and we can see everything that happens. One of you might get tempted to run down that staircase. Bear in mind we've got the professor here and what's her name-Cora."

"Sweets," Mack said.

"I'll shoot them if anybody tries to escape. Do we have an understanding?"

Balenger's voice cracked. "Yes."

"Then open that wall."

Vinnie pounded with the crowbar, enlarging the hole. By angling his taped hands sideways, Balenger was able to grip chunks of plaster and tear them away. Joists were exposed, two-by-fours, a frame onto which plasterboard had been nailed. More and more of the space behind the wall became visible.

"Hell, you could have a party back there," Tod said.

There was a six-foot gap between Danata's living room and the wall for the next room. On the right, close to the balcony wall, a spiral staircase led up and down. It was metal, and reminded Balenger of a gigantic corkscrew.

"Explain it," JD said.

"Carlisle used the staircase to move secretly behind the walls," Balenger told him. "I'll bet the staircase goes all the way to the ground floor."

"And I'll bet there are other staircases," Vinnie said.

"The nutcase that built this hotel was a Peeping Tom?" JD asked.

"He lived through other people. He had to limit contact. He was afraid of injuries. A hemophiliac."

"What's-?"

"A blood disease. Carlisle's blood didn't have thickening agents. The slightest bump or scratch could cause him to bleed, and stopping it could seem impossible."

"So he got his jollies spying on his guests?" Tod asked.

Balenger's headlamp revealed the wall on the other side of the passageway. Every five feet, what looked like the eyepiece of a microscope protruded from the wall. "With those. The wall on the opposite side probably has tiny holes hidden at the side of a painting or under a light fixture attached to the wall. Lenses on this side magnified the image."

"He could watch people undressing?" Mack said. "Or going to the bathroom or screwing?"

"Or arguing," Balenger said. "Or a man getting drunk and beating his wife, or a woman getting into a warm bath and committing suicide by slitting her wrists and bleeding to death."

"Or a boy using a baseball bat to smash his father's head into jelly," Vinnie said. "All of those things happened here. Eventually, over the life of the hotel, every room had something terrible happen in it."

"That was the whole idea of the Paragon Hotel," Balenger said. "All our emotions, good and bad. Carlisle wanted to see everything humans were capable of, so he built himself a small version of the world."

"Do I look like I care?" Tod demanded. "Where's the damned vault?"

Balenger glanced from the staircase all the way along the exposed passageway. His gaze rested on a section of wall in line with the long wall in Danata's living room, where metal shutters hid windows that once looked out on the boardwalk and the beach. "There's a door between those shutters. Where do you suppose it leads?"

"A balcony?" Vinnie suggested.

"Or maybe a patio. Each of the hotel's levels is set back," Balenger said. "When Danata walked out the original door, he was standing on the roof of the room below him. I bet he had a patio there. Planters filled with bushes and trees. An outdoor table and chairs. Maybe a sun lounge. Lean back. Have a drink. Watch the girls on the beach. That's how I'd have wanted it. But Danata had a long career as a mob enforcer. He didn't stay alive for decades by being stupid and sitting out in the open. People in the rooms to the right and left would have been able to see him. A guy whose brother got shot by him might be tempted to rent the room next door and blow a hole in Danata's head while he was having a drink and watching the girls."

"So?" Tod asked.

"In Danata's place, I'd have built extensions along both walls of my suite. Extensions that went all the way to the edge of the patio and the roof. Walls that kept people in the other rooms from seeing him."

"So fucking what?"

"Maybe the extension on this side is as wide as this passageway. Maybe the passageway continues all the way to the edge of the roof." Balenger studied the six-foot-wide section of wall at the end of the passageway. At shoulder level, a screw projected from the right and left. Without asking permission, he walked along the corridor and tapped the wall. "Sounds hollow." Again, he studied the screws. "With my hands taped, I can't pull at these."

"Stand back." Tod aimed the pistol.

When Balenger was an unthreatening distance away, JD stepped between upright two-by-fours and approached the end wall. He gripped the screws on each side and pulled, but nothing happened. "Those screws are in solid."

"Tug harder. I think they're handles."

JD yanked, then stumbled back as a partition broke free. Headlamps and flashlights pierced the dark continuation of the passageway.

"And there's your vault," Balenger said.