Wild Card

Chapter 8

Doyle drove to the beach that morning while it was still dark. It killed his leg to drive, but he gutted it out. He had circled today’s date in his calendar two months ago, right after seeing an article in the newspaper which said a company called Bally’s had gotten the go-ahead to demolish the Marlborough-Blenheim hotel, and build a new casino on the Boardwalk.

The Marlborough-Blenheim had once defined everything that was wonderful about Atlantic City, it’s reinforced concrete towers rising up like a cathedral at the edge of the sea. Doyle had played in its lobby as a kid, and had his wedding reception in one of its ballrooms. And now it was coming down.

An eight-block stretch had been cordoned off by police sawhorses. He parked on Atlantic Avenue, then walked a block to the Boardwalk and headed north. He used a cane, and stopped occasionally to catch his breath. Being crippled was a drag. People avoided eye contact, fearful, he guessed, of being like him one day. It’s not so bad, he wanted to tell them, once you get used to the rejection. Reaching the Boardwalk, he spotted a man with a two-day beard standing by a pushcart.

“You working today?” Doyle asked him.

“Trying to,” the man said, blowing into his hands. “I read in the newspaper there might be a crowd to see the explosion, so I figured I’d come out.”

“How much to take me to the hotel?”

“They won’t let you that close.”

“I’m a cop,” Doyle said.

The man scratched his unshaven chin. “Two bucks.”

Doyle climbed into the pushcart. A cold wind was coming off the ocean. He tied a knot in his scarf, then removed the Bell and Howell camera slung around his neck, and made sure it was loaded with film. The man lifted the pushcart onto his shoulders, and started walking. The Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel loomed ahead, still the biggest kid on the block. Ten years ago it had fallen on hard times, and become a refuge for Welfare mothers and transients. Today, it was surrounded by police sawhorses and sleepy-eyed cops.

They soon reached the hotel. Doyle said hello to several cops he knew, and they let him through. The man pulled the pushcart down to the beach and parked it. Doyle got out, and handed the man a five-dollar bill.

“Keep the change,” he said.

Doyle walked down to the shoreline until he was a few feet from the water. He filled his lungs with air, the tangy smell of salt and kelp honing his spirit. Ever since he could remember, he’d loved the smell of the sea.

“You want me to come back when it’s over?” the man asked.

“Do that,” Doyle said.

He spent several minutes focusing his camera, the picture he wanted slowly taking shape as the sun snuck up behind him. At seven, one of the sleepy-eyed cops sauntered over. “We have to clear out,” the cop said. “You’re on your own.”

“Thanks a lot,” Doyle said.

“It could be dangerous, standing this close.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Good luck.”

The cop left, and Doyle continued to adjust the hotel’s image in his camera. At seven-fifteen, five men wearing hard hats came out of the hotel. They worked for a Dallas-based company called Controlled Demolition Incorporated. For the past month, they’d busied themselves drilling 4,000 holes into the hotel’s supports, then filled the holes with 1,200 pounds of high-grade explosives. The local newspaper had run a picture, detailing how the hotel would implode upon itself. Three years to build, the caption read, ten seconds to destroy. The CDI experts also went south.

The wind had picked up, and Doyle felt the cheeks of his ass freeze together. He looked up and down the beach, and realized he was alone. The Marlborough-Blenheim deserved a better send-off, but he guessed no one cared about history these days.

Five minutes later, the beginning of the end. From inside the Marlborough-Blenheim came a series of booming explosions. The whole earth shook, and a flock of seagulls exploded from the roof of the hotel, and flew directly over Doyle’s head. He dropped his cane, then fell backwards in the soft sand, the camera resting safely in his lap.

“There she blows!” he yelled.

He watched the hotel begin to cave in, its walls a jittering mass. It was horribly beautiful the way only a tragedy can be, and he steadied the camera with both hands and started snapping pictures.

Doyle had a small darkroom in the basement of his house. He drove home and went there immediately, not bothering to brush the dust out of his hair. The hotel had come down fast, and he wasn’t sure if any of his pictures were good.

He spent an hour inhaling the warm chemical stench as he shepherded glossies from developer to stop bath to fixer tray. He worked backwards in the roll. His fingers were in several of the shots. Others were ruined by a bad angle, or the intrusive sunlight. Reaching the last shot, he hesitated before removing it from the tray.

He shook the glossy out, then placed it beneath an infra-red light on his work area. The photograph showed the building in mid-collapse, the floors caving in with uniform precision, while the building’s towers were still erect. Through a cloud of white dust, he spied a face in an upper-story window. A man, staring out, wanting no part of a world that would destroy a building as beautiful as the Marlborough-Blenheim. Then, before his disbelieving eyes, the face vanished.

“Can’t be,” he said aloud.

He got a magnifying glass and had another look. The image hadn’t left a trace, and he decided it was the processing fluid. It always distorted a picture before it dried.

“Who lived in the hotel?” his wife Liddy asked a few minutes later. Seeing the stricken look on his face as he’d come upstairs, she’d fixed him a pot of coffee.

“Welfare mothers and elderly people,” Doyle said, sitting at the kitchen table. “A month ago they were evicted. Some refused to leave, so Banko made us take them out. Bunch of them were crying.”

Liddy sat next to her husband. She knew how much Doyle had loved the hotel, and how its demolition had torn his heart in two.

“It must have been hard,” she said.

“Hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.

“But it had to be done,” she reminded him.

“I know. But it still didn’t feel right. Couldn’t Bally’s have built their casino someplace else? That building was special.”

Liddy placed her hand on top of her husband’s. They had grown up on the island, and it was hard to see the old places being torn down to be replaced by casinos.

“Do you really think you saw a face in the picture?” she asked.

“I saw something, that’s for sure.”

“Can I have a look?”

“Sure.”

They went downstairs to the darkroom and looked at the photograph together. Now, instead of a face in the upper-story window, there was nothing but bright sunlight. Doyle wondered if his eyes were playing tricks with him.

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Liddy suggested.

“I heard the hotel was filled with those,” Doyle said.

She put her arms around her husband’s waist, and held him tightly.

“I’m sorry, Doyle. I know you loved that place.”

Doyle kissed the top of his wife’s head. As they headed back upstairs, he glanced at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes before nine. Banko had called a special meeting at the station house at nine sharp. If he hurried, he could still get there on time.

“Got to run,” he said.