Mystery

Dimly aware of the presence of a crowd of hovering figures, Tom leaned closer to the boy and saw that he was looking into his own, now barely recognizable, boyhood face. His heart banged, and he opened his eyes to a dark room in the St. Alwyn Hotel. The yellow glow of a street lamp lay on the window, and a filmy trace of light touched the ceiling. He reached for the bedside lamp, still seeing in his mind the face of the child in the wheelchair. Sudden light brought the room into focus. Tom rubbed his face and moaned. “Are you back?” he called. “Lamont?” It was the first time he had used the old man’s first name, and it felt uncomfortable as a stone in his mouth. No response came from the other room.

Tom looked at his watch and saw that it was ten-fifteen. He thought he must have been asleep for three or four hours. He swung his legs off the bed and walked on stiff legs to the connecting door. “Hello,” he called, thinking that von Heilitz might have come back from the meeting at Hobart’s and gone to bed. There was no answer. Tom opened the door. Here was another dark room, identical to his own—two chairs at a round table by the window, a double bed, a couch, a closet, and a bathroom. The bed was made, and a depression in the pillow and wrinkles in the coverlet showed where von Heilitz had lain.

Feeling as if he were trespassing, Tom walked through the dark room to the window. One carriage rolled up Calle Drosselmayer, the headlights of the cars behind shining on the muscular flanks of a pair of black horses. A few people paraded down the sidewalk in the warm night air, and a flock of sailors ran across the street. The grille had been pulled down over the pawnshop window. An overweight man in a white shirt and tan trousers leaned against the wall beside the entrance to The Home Plate, smoking and looking across the street to the steps of the hotel. The man looked up, and Tom stepped back from the window. The man yawned, crossed his arms over his chest, flipped his cigarette into the street.

Tom went back to his own room to wait until the Shadow came back from his meeting with David Natchez. He ate bread and cheese and slices of salami, and read twenty pages of The Divided Man. When had von Heilitz left for the meeting at Hobart’s? Two hours ago? Nervous, Tom laid the book open on the table and paced the room, listening for noises in the hall. He opened the door and leaned out, but saw only the empty corridor and a long row of brown doors with painted-over metal numbers. Someone down at the end of the hallway played scales on a tenor saxophone, someone else listened to a radio. Footsteps came toward him from around the corner leading to the stairs, and Tom ducked back behind his door. The footsteps rounded the corner, came nearer, went past his door. He peeked out and saw a small, dark-haired man with a ponytail carrying a trumpet case and a brown paper bag moving toward a door at the end of the hall. He knocked, and the saxophone abruptly inserted two honks into the E-minor scale. “Hey, Glenroy,” said the man at the door. Tom leaned his head out into the hall, but saw no more than the door opening wide enough for the trumpet player to slide into the room.

He sat down at the table and ate another wedge of cheese. He took his key from his pocket and scratched TP into the wood near the PD. Then he tried to rub it out, but managed only to darken the thin white lines. When he looked out the window, the man in the white shirt was staring at a group of women who had just left The Home Plate and were walking up Calle Drosselmayer, talking and laughing. Tom pulled the telephone nearer to him and dialed Sarah Spence’s number.

She answered in the middle of the first ring, and he imagined her watching television in Anton Goetz’s dream palace, reaching out her hand with her eyes still on the screen, absently saying, “Hello?”

He could not speak.

“Hello?”

What did you tell people? Tom said silently. Who did you tell?

“Isn’t anybody there?”

For longer than he had expected, she held the phone, waiting for a response.

Then: “Tom?”

He drew in a breath.

“Is that you, Tom?” she asked. Very faintly, he could hear the singsong of a television behind her voice. From farther away than the television, her mother yelled, “Are you crazy?”

Tom hung up, then dialed his own house, without any idea of what he could say to his mother, or if he would say anything at all. The telephone rang twice, three times, and when it was picked up Dr. Milton’s voice said, “This is the Pasmore residence.” Tom slammed down the phone.

He looked at his watch and watched the minute hand jerk from ten-fifty to ten fifty-one.

Then he lifted the receiver again and dialed von Heilitz’s telephone number. The phone rang and rang: Tom counted ten rings, then eleven, then fifteen, and gave up.

Unable to stay in the room any longer, he went to the bed and put on the shoes von Heilitz had taken off him, splashed water on his face in the bathroom, glanced at a taut face in the mirror, dried himself off and straightened his tie, and let himself out into the hallway. Through the last door came the sounds of a trumpet and tenor saxophone softly, slowly playing “Someone to Watch Over Me” in unison. Voices drifted toward him. He walked to the stairs and went down to the lobby.

A few sailors had spilled out from Sinbad’s Cavern, and stood in a tight knot around the door, holding glasses and beer bottles. The night clerk leaned over the desk in a pool of light, slowly turning the pages of an Eyewitness. Tom came down the last steps, and the clerk and a few of the sailors glanced up at him, then looked away. Steel drum music from a jukebox came faintly from the bar and grill. Lamp light fell on worn leather chairs and couches, and illuminated red and blue details in a patchy Oriental carpet. On the other side of the St. Alwyn’s glass doors, cars streamed up and down the street. Tom began moving through the sailors, who parted to let him open the door of the bar.

The steel drum music instantly sizzled into his head. Women and sailors and men in loud shirts filled the room with shouts and laughter and cigarette smoke. A couple of sailors were dancing in front of the crowded bar, flinging out their arms, snapping their fingers, drunkenly trying to keep in time to the music. Tom slowly worked his way down the bar, squeezing through the sailors and their girls, cigarette smoke making his eyes water. At last he reached the door, and went outside to the Street of Widows.

The market was closed, but the vendor still sat on his rug beside his hats and baskets, talking to himself or to imaginary customers. Across the street men went up the steps to the Traveller’s Hotel. A CLOSED sign hung in the door of Ellington’s Allsorts and Notions. When the light changed, the cars and buggies began to move toward Calle Drosselmayer. The ping-ping-ping of the steel drums sounded through the window with the flashing neon scimitar. At a break in the traffic, Tom ran across the street.

“Hats for your lady, hats for yourself, baskets for the market,” sang the barefoot vendor.

Tom knocked on Hobart’s door. No lights burned in the shop.

“Nothing in there, the cupboard be bare,” the vendor called to him.

Tom beat on the door again. He searched the frame and found a brass button and held it down until he saw a small dark figure moving toward him through the interior of the shop. “Closed!” Hobart shouted. Tom stepped back so the shopowner could see his face, and Hobart darted to the door, opened it, and pulled Tom inside.

“What do you want? What you looking for?”

“My friend isn’t still here?”

Hobart stepped backward and said, “What friend? Do I know what friend you’re talking about?” He was wearing a long cream-colored nightshirt that made him look like an angry doll.

“Lamont von Heilitz. I came here with him this morning. We bought a lot of things—you said I looked like his nephew.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” Hobart said. “Maybe a man says he’s gonna be somewhere, maybe he never means to come. Nobody tells Hobart—no reason for anybody to tell Hobart, don’t you know that?” Hobart stared at him stonily, then took a step toward the door.

“You mean he didn’t come?”

“If you don’t know, maybe you’re not supposed to,” Hobart said. “How do I know what you are? You’re no nephew of that man’s.”

“Did the policeman show up?”

“There was someone here,” Hobart admitted. “Might have been him.”

“And my friend never came for the meeting,” Tom said, for a second almost too stunned to worry.

“If you’re his friend, how come you don’t know that?”

“He left the hotel hours ago to come here.”

“Could be that’s what he told you. Man came here and waited, could be that’s what he wanted him to do,” Hobart said. “I see you’re worried, but I tell you, I worried about Lamont twenty, thirty years, it never did a bit of good. He put on a stringy old wig and a bunch a rags, and he stood on a street corner somewheres, watching for something he knew was gonna happen. I’m talking straight to you now, nephew.” Hobart put his hand on the doorknob.

“How long did the other man wait for him?”

“He was here a good hour, and when he left he was steaming. Don’t look for any favors from that man.” Hobart’s teeth gleamed in the dark shop. “Nearly tore off my bell, way he went through the door.” He patted Tom’s arm. “You just go back and wait for him. This is the way your friend works, don’t you know that yet?”

“I guess not,” Tom said.

“Don’t worry.” Hobart reached up to hold the bell with one hand as he cracked the door open with the other.

“That’s what he told me,” Tom said, and went outside. The door closed silently behind him.

“You got in, but did you buy?” the vendor chanted.

Tom glanced at the shoeless figure leaning against the wall. He nearly laughed out loud—relief made him feel lighter than air. He walked past the entrance of the Traveller’s Hotel toward the vendor and knelt on the sidewalk beside him. “You had me worried,” he whispered. “Why didn’t you—?”

The vendor was a foot shorter than von Heilitz. Two doglike teeth jutted from his upper jaw, and ragged brown scars sewed shut both of his eyes. “A basket, or a hat?”

“A hat,” Tom said.

“Three dollars, pick your size, pick your size.”

Tom gave the man bills and picked up a hat at random.

“Did you hear a fight, or a scuffle, or anything like that, a couple of hours ago? It would have been outside the bar across the street.”

“I heard the Angel of the Lord,” the vendor said. “And I heard the Lord of Darkness, walking up and down in the world. You’ll look handsome, in that hat.”

Tom gave the hat to a sailor as he passed through the bar to go back to his room, and the sailor placed it on the head of a pretty whore.