Remember Me, Irene

13

STOP THE CAR,” I said.

Rachel complied, pulling over. “Do you see it? Over there. Look at the building across the street.”

“The one they’re working on?” she asked, indicating a scaffolded tower, where on a weekday, workers with jackhammers and cement mixers and other equipment would create the cacophony of construction work. Today, it was silent.

“No, the one to the right of it,” I said.

On the next lot, a tall, gray building stood, its dignity sagging like the chain-link fence which surrounded it. Like a lonely old woman whose dress and makeup are passé, it was both ornate and abandoned. At the top of the building, at each corner, a pair of angels stood, wings long and tucked close, hands folded in prayer, long robes draped heavily to their feet. Faces solemn and watchful.

If they were guardian angels, there was little left to guard, but perhaps it was through their protection that one or two of the large street-level windows miraculously remained unbroken. The owners and patrons of what I would guess were once opulent shops and elegant restaurants were long gone, no wares displayed in the windows dull with dirt and brick dust from the project next door. Still, the bright red Chinese characters painted on one of them were plainly visible, as were the words which had caught my attention: Great Wall of China Restaurant.

My gaze moved to the building’s front entry. At the top of a set of stairs, a banner held by two smaller stone angels spelled out a name: The Angelus Hotel.

An angel watches over the Prof-watches over him all the time. Seen it with my own eyes at the Great Wall of China…Got to say it three times, when the bells ring.

“Looks like you were right,” she said. “Two Toes was talking about the Angelus.”

“It was the only hotel on Corky’s list that fit with anything Two Toes was saying. I’m not sure they ever served ham and eggs in there, but maybe he was just saying that it was a restaurant, not the actual Wall of China.”

“Saying?” she chided. “I think it was as much a secret code to him as to us.”

We got out of the car and started walking toward the old hotel. It looked like it had been built in the 1920s, one of Las Piernas’s boom periods.

“Domini angelus…”Rachel intoned, reciting the Latin opening which gave the prayer its name. “Should have known. Used to say the Angelus three times a day. You, too?”

“Sure. I went to Catholic school, remember? Should I sing a few bars ofO Salutarus Hostia for you?”

“Some other time. Wonder if a Catholic built the hotel?”

“That or someone who was trying to connect this town up with Los Angeles. But L.A. might not have been such a big place itself when this was built, and given all those angels on the corners, I’m betting this was put together by one of our more devout brethren.”

“One of our more affluent brethren,” Rachel said.

The fence along the front of the hotel was intact, if not exactly forbidding. We walked outside it to our right, away from the construction site and toward an alley on the other side of the Angelus. The alley was deserted, cut off from a one-way street by three large metal posts with bent reflector signs on them. I burrowed my hands into my coat pockets and followed Rachel as she walked down the alley, studying the building.

Ahead of us, in a section that would have been out of sight from the construction workers, the fence had been cut. Rachel pulled back on the mesh of chain link and made an “after you” bow.

Squatting low, I made my way through, then waited for Rachel. We now stood on a long strip of ground that might have once been a lawn or garden. A pair of tall palm trees and a few clumps of weeds were all that remained of it.

A long paved drive ran between the strip and the hotel. Beyond the drive was what must have been a parking lot-what I could see of it was cracked asphalt studded with weeds.

Rachel stood still, looking at the hotel, and then at the ground. “Good thing it rained the other night,” she said. “That will help us find the preferred entrance.”

“Footprints.”

“Right. The ground is dry now, but some folks definitely took shelter here when it rained. These ought to point the way.”

The trail of bent grass and depressions in the dried mud angled to and from the back of the building. We followed them.

“Don’t slip on this palm crud,” Rachel said as we crunched our way across the messy drive. The “palm crud” was actually hundreds of unfertilized dates, dropped onto the concrete over God knows how many seasons without a gardener.

We made our way closer to the building. At one end of the hotel, we went past a metal door at street level-it was welded shut. Two floors above it, a series of small windows began, going to the top of the building. The lowest windows were broken out.

“So much for the stairwell,” Rachel said, looking up as we continued toward the back of the building. “Look-even the fire escape has been welded in place. Bad news.”

“Because of the danger to the unofficial tenants?”

She nodded. “These guys light fires to stay warm; if they fall asleep, or if they’re drunk or high or careless, there goes the building-and maybe everybody in it. Or they suffocate-the fire stays under control, but they don’t have proper ventilation in the room, and the fire burns up all the oxygen.”

We climbed some concrete steps at the back of the building. A little less picturesque than the front, the back was comprised mainly of a series of doors that had been boarded up.

“Wood’s fairly new,” I said. “Doesn’t look like this was done so long ago.”

“No, but look-here’s one that’s already been jimmied back open. Let me go in first, just in case any of the unofficial residents are in.”

She pulled the big flashlight out of her belt and turned it on. As she cautiously opened the door, we were greeted with the sharp, overpowering smell of excrement.

“Yeeech,” I said, backing away.

She laughed. “You weren’t expecting the maid service to have the place all clean and tidy, were you?”

“No, but I wasn’t expecting to walk into the bottom of an outhouse, either.”

She turned her back to me, flashing the light around the large room, which was lined with rusting pipes and sets of valves. A shaft of some sort rose from one end of the room.

“Laundry room, I think,” she said.

“Maybe so. But nothing’s been cleaned here for a while.”

“This isn’t so bad. Think how awful it would be if it were a warm day-just watch your step in this one place near the door,” she said, spotlighting it with the flashlight. It was about two feet away from where I stood.

“Let’s move on, okay?”

“Prop that door open,” she said. “I want to be able to get out of here in a hurry if we have to.”

The door still had a stop attached to it, so I kicked it down. It held.

We made our way to an interior door. We stepped into a long, dark hallway. Several doors led off it. The floor was sticky, and the odor of urine permeated the cold air. I tried not to think about it, and swore I’d throw my shoes away when I got home.

“Prop that one open, too,” Rachel said. “Make it easier to find our way out.”

As we walked away from the door, the hall grew darker, and it was the darkness and sense of confinement, not the stench, that began to stir a growing panic within me.

I once spent a few days locked in a small, dark room as the guest of a couple of creeps who got their kicks out of hearing people scream. One result of the experience is that I sometimes have to sleep with the light on. Other times, it’s better not to go to sleep at all. Darkness is not my old friend.

I tried to keep my mind away from memories as we went on. Rachel kept moving forward. I followed more closely. She looked back at me, holding the flashlight so that it didn’t blind me.

“You okay? You want to wait outside?”

I wanted it more than just about anything, but I shook my head. “Lucas knows me, he doesn’t know you.”

“He’s not likely to be hanging out here during the day.”

“I’m going with you.”

She shrugged and moved on. She stopped often to listen as we approached doors. The only noises to be heard were the now-distant sounds of occasional traffic on the street, our sticky footsteps, and the hammering of my heart. My claustrophobia was kicking in.

“We’re making our way to a stairwell,” she said, her tone gentle, coaxing. “There should be more light there.”

I couldn’t answer.

She looked back at me again, then put the light on the doors around us. Some were marked, most weren’t. She paused, as if debating something. I started shaking. I tried to force insistent images from my mind. This is different, I told myself. You’re safe, you’re safe. I heard my own breathing-quick, short breaths.

“Slow down,” she said. “You want to carry the light?”

“No.” I made myself take slower breaths.

She reached back and took my hand, then started walking again. My own hand felt cold in hers. I wanted to protest, to say she was making me feel like a child, but I was grateful for her warm, firm grip.

“Hope thatstronzo we found back there didn’t bother you too much.”

I shook my head. Useless in the dark.Get me out of here! I wanted to scream.

“Look at it like a hunter would,” she said. “Think of it as fresh spoor. Maybe your friend left it.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said, my voice tight. “Somebody else, maybe. Not Lucas.”

“Oh, so your friend the bum is such a saint he doesn’t ever take a shit, eh?”

I pulled my hand away.

“Oh,”she said, in the darkness, “so he’s a saint, just like St. Anthony?” She kept moving forward; I was forced to follow at a faster pace. “The saint who never took a dump,” she went on. “What a fantastic miracle to have to one’s credit!”

I felt my fists clench. “Stop it.”

“Maybe the pope will make him patron saint of the asshole. St. Bum of the bum.”

“Goddamn it, Rachel,” I shouted, “shut the fuck up!”

The words echoed in the hallway. She stopped, and flashed the light on the door just ahead of us.EXIT was painted on it. She turned back to look at me, bouncing the light off a nearby wall, illuminating both of our faces. She was smiling. “Much better.”

I realized what she had done, why she had done it. I dropped my gaze. “Forgive me if I don’t say ‘thank you’ right away.”

She laughed and opened the door.

There was light in the stairwell, and more air, a combination which helped me to calm down. I raced past her, up the stairs to the first broken window. I put my face up to the opening, took deep, gulping breaths of cold, fresh air. The knots went out of my stomach, I stopped shaking. Then, on that wave of relief, for the next few moments, I felt as if I might start crying.

At one time, an emotional reaction like that would have made me ashamed of myself. Now, I was growing used to it, and perhaps because I knew it would pass, it passed more quickly. I looked over at Rachel, who was waiting behind me on the landing, pretending to be studying her cellular phone. Her long hair cloaked her face, hiding her expression.

“Are my nose and cheeks as red as yours?” I asked.

She looked up. “Yes, and yourorecchi -your ears, too.”

I reached up and rubbed a hand through my hair. “I can’t wait for this to grow out again.”

“It will, it will. That stubbornness of yours will push it right out of your head. Your hair will be longer than mine by summer.”

I laughed.

She smiled. “A good sound, that laugh of yours,” she said, putting the phone away. She began to lead the way upstairs again. “I figure we should start at the top. That okay with you?”

“We’re thinking the same thing. Corky said Lucas liked to go to the upper floors in a building.”

“Right.”

There was little conversation after that. The task of climbing fourteen flights of stairs kept us both warm and quiet. Rachel was in terrific shape; Frank, Mr. Really Great You-Know-What, once told me that Rachel had shamedhim into a more rigorous work-out. I was still making a comeback from having been laid up for a while; for the last few floors, I had to put real effort into it.

At the top floor, we stepped out into a dark area near a set of elevators. We rounded a corner into a dimly lit hallway. The light was coming from two large glass doors, long plates of frosted green glass. Deco-style woodwork of mahogany and chrome framed the doors. Twin angels, as solemn as their counterparts on the exterior of the building, faced us. Draped in heavy robes, each held a sword. “The angels on this building are the saddest heavenly creatures I’ve ever seen in my life,” Rachel said, pushing one of the doors open. “Maybe I won’t feel too bad if I go the other way.”

The doors opened on to one large room. Light streamed in from three directions, from long windows that must have once offered a fantastic view of the city and the water. Now, taller buildings blocked much of that view. Behind us, a long bar carved with smiling cherubs stood before a big mirror that had lost a lot of its silvering.

“The happier angels are here at the bar,” I said, my voice echoing in the empty room.

“I guess those serious types at the door are the bouncers,” she said.

“Guardian angels. Must be-if my guess about the age of the building is right, that glass and the rest of this place survived the big quake of 1933.”

Rachel shivered and made an Italian gesture to ward off evil. “Don’t say the word ‘earthquake,’” she said. A hardwood floor, scarred and buckling, remained in place, although I doubted that anything other than dust motes had danced in this room in the last few decades. I squatted down closer to the floor to look at it from another angle.

“Doesn’t look like anyone has been staying up here,” Rachel was saying.

“No, but look at the floor. Someone sat up here and admired the view.”

There were places here and there that might have been old footprints, but a set that was clearly newer led across the floor to a place along the south-facing windows, and back again to the doors. Whatever tables and chairs had been in the room had long ago been removed, but an overturned crate was propped up near the windows where the footprints ended.

“Let’s take a look,” she said.

“These windows face south, toward the ocean.”

“Do you think he was trying to look at the water?”

“Couldn’t see much of it from here.”

Near the crate, the view from the windows took in a narrow glimpse of the sea. The buildings directly across the street didn’t block the view, but several blocks away, especially along Broadway, a long cluster of skyscrapers stood between the Angelus and the Pacific Ocean. One in particular caught my attention-a black glass monolith, one of the tallest buildings downtown. Three letters crowned the giant: BLP. The Bank of Las Piernas. Ben Watterson’s bank.

“Let’s try the next floor down,” I said.

THERE WAS NO LIGHTin the hallway on the fourteenth floor of the Angelus Hotel, but there was still plenty of cold air. It didn’t stink like the first-floor hallway, making me wonder if that was one reason Lucas took the trouble to climb all of those stairs in the buildings he slept in.

Rachel grew cautious again, listening carefully before opening the first door we came to. As it creaked open, she waited a moment in the hallway before stepping into the room. I crept in after her.

Only when a hotel room is absolutely empty do you realize how small it is. No carpet, no drapes, no bed. A radiator against the wall beneath the window. Only the window trim and wainscoting kept the room from being utterly plain. I could see our breath as we looked around.

No sound.

Rachel glanced in the small bathroom and closet.

“Nobody has been in here for ages. Let’s keep looking.”

As we left the room, I started to pull the door shut.

“No, leave it open,” she said. “More light in the hallway.” She paused, then added, “Would you like me to open one of those windows?”

I shook my head. “I’m okay now. Thanks-for offering, and for what you did earlier.”

“You know I didn’t mean it, right? It’s just that you were looking like you might pass out down there, and that was the first thing I could think of to distract you.”

“You were successful. And yes, I know you didn’t mean it. But next time, let’s just argue politics or religion.”

“Wouldn’t have worked as fast,” she said, then leaned an ear to the next door. We opened six doors on six small rooms on the fourteenth floor of the Angelus, and found nothing.

On the seventh try, we found Lucas.