14 (7 page)

From the bottom of the steps he could see the blue
X
holding a note in place. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of going back and grabbing the other beer. On one level, the idea of seeing his blue-haired neighbor again—seeing
all
of her again—was appealing. On another level, there was something about her matter-of-factness that sucked a lot of joy out of the thought of hanging out and having a beer with his hot, naked neighbor. He’d heard it was a lot like that with nudity on a movie set. It was so mechanical and unnatural it didn’t even seem sexy.

Nate plodded back to his apartment and opened his laptop. He still didn’t have internet. He checked email and did his casual browsing at work. At his old place, Sean had a work connection set up that he let everyone share. Nate hadn’t gotten around to setting anything up in his new place. He could pay to use his cell phone as a hotspot, but it’d cost him around thirty bucks a month. For now, though, hopefully someone in the area would have an open Wi-Fi connection he could use.

The area was filled with wireless signals. A few 2Wires, a Linksys, and some strings of letters he couldn’t decipher. The top connection was the strongest signal. Five bars. It was WEP protected.

houseofmystery

He remembered Mandy had mentioned a woman on the second floor who had wireless setup in the building. That had been almost two weeks ago, though, and he couldn’t remember the apartment number or the name that went with it.

Nate decided to walk the downstairs hall and see if one of the apartment numbers leaped out at him.

The second floor lounge was empty. He hadn’t been here since Toni first showed him the apartment three weeks ago. He hadn’t heard any noise from beneath his apartment, either.
Does anyone use this place?
he wondered. The idea of dragging his little DVD player down and watching a movie on the big screen crossed his mind. He could order a pizza or get Mexican food or something. There were worse ways to spend a Saturday night.

Right after the lounge was the fire door, held open by a magnetic clamp. On the other side of it were apartments 15 and 16. He looked at the door marked 15 and thought it sounded familiar. He was almost positive it was the number Mandy had told him.

He stared at the door for a moment. He took a breath and stretched his neck over his shoulder on each side. Just in case, he rehearsed an explanation for knocking on a stranger’s door and hoped whoever lived here wasn’t going to be too angry for the disturbance.

Then he stopped and looked to his left again.

Kitty-cornered across the hall was apartment 14. He remembered it flying past on his first whirlwind tour of the Kavach Building. At the time, he thought he’d glimpsed a pair of padlocks on it. Now that he had time to look, he could see all of them.

Four hasps had been screwed into the left side of the door frame—two above the knob, two below it. They were big, thick plates of metal, and Nate was willing to bet each one weighed a pound or two.

The padlocks were just as solid. They were heavy, riveted things. Two of them had keyholes on the front, like the locks on movie pirate chests. He didn’t recognize any of the brand names engraved on them, but each one looked like it could take several hits from a hammer without loosening in the slightest.

They were old. The hasps had been painted two or three times, and paint was splattered on the locks. He could see at least four different shades and colors on the padlock just above the knob. It was the newest-looking of the four.

Even the knob was old. Beneath the layers of latex was a multi-faceted ball, like an oversized gemstone. He’d seen knobs like that before in old buildings. Nate glanced up and down the hall, then scratched the knob with his fingernails. The paint wrinkled and tore away in ragged scraps. He got a good piece pinched between his fingers and peeled away a long strip. It got wider as he pulled at it and then the edge twisted around and it tore free.

The knob was clear glass. He looked at the ribbon of latex in his hand and tried to count layers on its edge. The knob had been painted at least three times, probably more.

His eyes moved from the knob to the rest of the door. Like so many old buildings, years of rushed paint jobs had covered the metal hardware. There was also paint in the gap between the door and the frame.

Nate dug around in his wallet and pulled out a plastic card he didn’t mind wrecking, a discount card for a grocery chain he rarely shopped at. He picked a spot between the uppermost hasps and tried to push the card through the paint covering the gap between the frame and the door. It was solid. There were years of sloppiness in that gap. No one had opened the door in ages, maybe decades. Probably not even in his lifetime.

He thought of the elevator buttons that were painted solid. There were decades of paint on them, too.
It’s out of service right now,
Toni had told him,
but they’ll probably have it working by the time you move in.

He glanced up at the ceiling and thought of the other mystery door. Apartment 23 with its non-existent knob. The last thoughts of a wireless internet connection fled from his mind as he strode down the hall and up the staircase.

Nate stood before 23 and pulled out the grocery card again. He pushed it into the gap between the door and the frame, just above the locking plate. The card twisted around the edge of the door, sunk in half its width, and hit something solid. He worked it back and forth and mapped out the interior edge, then he swept it down alongside the lock plate.

The card slid down with no problem. No bumps or catches. No sudden stops when it hit the deadbolt. He dragged it up and down a few more times. There was nothing there. No locks or bolts of any kind.

Nate didn’t have a lot of carpentry experience, but he knew this next part would be trickier. He worked the card into the other side of the door, right up at the top corner. It went in an inch and a half and stopped again.

He slid the card down and tried to feel for any snags at all. The plastic was pressed against the inside edge, so he felt confident he should sense any small edges or gaps, but there weren’t any. The card made its way down to the floor. He reversed direction and dragged it back to the top.
They’d be recessed,
he thought,
sunk into the wood, but I should still feel
something
there.

The card made it back to the top without incident.

There were no hinges on the door to 23.

He studied the card as he bent it flat again. It had no actual information on it that tied back to him. If someone found it they wouldn’t be able to tell it was his.

He set it on the floor in front of 23. There was no sill, just a thin gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. He pressed his fingertips against the card and pushed it under the door.

It went in an inch and a half before it clicked against something solid.

“What are you doing?”

Nate jumped back, stumbled, and fell on his ass. The thump was very loud in the hallway. He turned to look at his accuser.

The speaker was an Arab woman, or maybe Indian, with owlish glasses and a hawk nose. Even with the loose Oxford she was wearing he could see she was slim. Her dark hair was cut short, and with her slight build it made her look like a teenager. She’d come up the back stairwell and was standing between him and the door to his apartment.

“I’m just...” He tried to think of a good answer. “I’m checking something.”

She crossed her arms. She had a phone in her hand. “What?”

He glanced at the door and back to the woman. “I don’t think it’s a real door,” he blurted out. He knew the minute the words left his mouth that he sounded like a lunatic. He wondered if she was going to call Oskar, or maybe even the police.

Instead she nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “It isn’t a real door.”

He stared at her for a moment. “How do you know?”

“Were you just downstairs?” she asked. “Did you scrape the paint off the knob to fourteen?”

All his resistance faded away. “Yeah,” he admitted, “that was me.” He took a breath. “I was down there looking for the person who’s in charge of the wireless and I saw the door with all the padlocks and I...I got curious.”

She stared down at him. He was stunned how much accusation she was able to pack into her stare. After a few moments she said, “You’re the new guy. The one who moved into twenty-eight a few weeks ago.”

“Yeah. Nate Tucker.”

She nodded. “Mandy said you might come looking for me. I’m Veek.”

The name he couldn’t remember.

“You’ve got to be careful,” she told him. “Oskar’ll put up with a lot, but he gets pissed when people mess up the building,” said Veek, “Things’ll go a lot easier for you here if you remember that.”

“You said it wasn’t a real door.” He glanced at 23 again.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “Look, just stop being stupid, okay? Scratching the paint off the knob was dumb, and I’m probably going to get blamed for it.”

“What’s going on here?”

Veek twisted her lips and snorted at him. “I’ll get something set up for you tonight.” The phone unfolded in her hand with a snap and her fingers danced on the small keypad. “Stop by my apartment tomorrow at noon and I’ll give you a password.”

“But what about—”

“Don’t be late.” The phone snapped shut. She turned, vanished back down the stairwell, and left Nate sitting on the floor in the hall.

Nate was just rising from the floor when Tim came up the front stairwell with two bags of groceries. “Hey, neighbor,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Oh, you know,” said Nate. “Stuff.”

Tim dug out his keys and waved them at 23 as he walked past. “The mystery of the missing knob still gnawing at you?”

“Kind of.” Nate walked away from the door. “As one new guy to another, we have some weird neighbors.”

“Besides the nudist with blue hair and the guy who sits on the floor in the hall?”

“Yeah, okay, fair enough.”

Tim hefted the grocery bag. “Want a beer? I just grabbed some supplies from the store.”

“You know,” said Nate, “I would love one.”

“It looks like the roof’s open,” Tim said with a nod over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you up there in a couple of minutes with a six-pack.”

Nate went up to the roof. Sure enough, the note and the magnetic
X
were gone. Xela’d slipped past him somehow and the sun deck was deserted. He was half frustrated, half relieved.

He dragged two chairs together across the deck. He wrestled them around to face west and Tim appeared with the promised six-pack. “Hope you don’t mind light beer,” he said. “I’m keeping an eye on my weight. It’s easy for a man my age to go soft fast.”

“No problem at all.” Nate couldn’t picture Tim going soft at all, let alone fast. The man was in better shape than Nate had ever been.

They clinked their bottles and sat back in the deck chairs. The sun was already making long shadows through the mesh gazebo. “Y’know,” said Tim, “I couldn’t tell you the last time I sat and drank a beer and watched a sunset.”

“Did you ever do it before?”

The older man shrugged. “I must’ve. I mean, it’s something everybody does at some point in high school or something, right?”

“But you can’t remember?”

Tim shrugged again. “I’ve been busy.”

The sun touched the horizon somewhere around Century City. Through the gazebo’s mesh the red ball was cut up into a dozen small cells. Each one shimmered.

“So,” said Nate, “trying to find yourself?”

Tim blinked twice and then grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been doing the same thing my whole life and now I’ve decided it’s time for something different.”

“What were you doing before?”

“Books. I ran a small publishing house back in Virginia.”

Nate nodded. “Cool. Anything I might’ve read?”

Tim smiled. “Nothing you would’ve remembered. It was all technical material. Textbooks, operating manuals, stuff like that.” He took a hit off his beer.

“Is there a lot of money in that?”

“God, no,” said Tim. “The only reason I stayed afloat was big companies and a couple of government offices used me to print stuff for them. It was a living, but I sure wasn’t going to get rich anytime soon.”

The sun pressed itself down between two buildings. The horizon flared red. Nate imagined it was like watching a bomb go off in slow motion.

He sipped his beer. “That why you got out?”

Tim shook his head. “I’d been doing it for thirty-two years. Had one of those days when you suddenly wonder what you’ve been doing with your life, is this what you want to be doing, where’d the years go, and so on. Three weeks later someone offered to buy me out for double what I would’ve taken, so I said sure.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

A moment passed. “D’you miss it?” Nate asked.

Tim shook his head again. “Not quite yet. I’m still at the point where I spend the morning a bit confused I’m not in the office.” He finished his beer and returned the empty bottle to the six pack. “What about you, Nate? What brings you to the sun deck on this fine evening?”