The Throat (95 page)

Monroe walked
up the aisle, training the light along the rows of seats. He reached
the wide central passage that divided the front seats from the rear and
paused, working out if he'd be wasting his time by going farther. Tom
noiselessly lowered himself to the floor. I sank to my knees and kept
my eyes on Monroe. The detective moved across the divide between the
seats and went up another two rows. Then he scanned the light in long
sweeps across the seats in front of him. If he walked up another five
rows, he'd have to see us, and I held my breath and waited for the
cramp in my legs to subside.

Monroe turned
around. The beam of light flitted across the wall beside us, traveled
over the folds of the curtains, and struck the exit door. Monroe
started to move back down the far aisle. I watched him reach the side
of the stage, turn around to stab his light in a long pass back over
the seats, and then push through the door. I sat down and stretched out
my legs. Tom looked up at me and put his finger to his mouth. The alley
door opened. "He's getting away," I whispered. Tom shushed me.

The back door
opened and closed in a flurry of footsteps. The exit door swung in.
Monroe and a man in a blue running suit came back into the theater.
Monroe said, "Well, I don't think anyone got in."

"But they
unlocked the
chain
," said the
other man.

"Why do you
think I called you?"

"It's funny,"
said the other man. "I mean, they take the chain off, and then they
lock the
door
! Only but two
other people got the keys."

"Church
people?"

"My deacon
has one. And the owner's got one, that's for sure. But he never shows
his face—I never even met the man. Did you look at my office?"

"Do you keep
any money in there?"

"Money?" The
other man chuckled. "Holy Spirit is just a little storefront church,
you know. But I keep the hymnals, choir robes, that kind of thing, in
my office."

"Let's have a
look, Reverend," Monroe said, and they set off up the aisle, the
flashlight trained straight ahead of them. I lowered myself to the
carpet and heard them pass by on the other end of the long row of seats
and open the doors to the lobby.

As soon as
they had left the theater, Tom slid into his row and I into mine,
scooting along the cool concrete floor. The murmur of voices from the
lobby ceased when the two men went into the office. I flattened out on
the dusty concrete, my face an inch from a patch of fossilized gum. I
could see the bushy outline of Tom's head and the pale blot of his left
hand through the seat supports. The lobby doors swung in again.

"It doesn't
make sense at
all
to me,
officer," said the reverend. "But tomorrow,
I'm getting the locks changed, and I'm buying a new padlock for that
chain."

I stopped
breathing and tried to disappear into the floor. My cheek flattened out
against the wad of gum. It felt like dead skin. The two men came down
the far aisle. My heart accelerated as they approached my row. Their
slow footsteps neared me, passed me, continued down the aisle.

"How did you
come to check us in the first place, officer?"

"Some lunatic
called me this afternoon, asking me to meet him here this morning."

"
In
here?"
They stopped moving.

"So I thought
I ought to come down here, take a look at the place."

"The Lord
thanks you for your diligence, officer."

The footsteps
resumed.

"I'm putting
that chain back on the door and getting new locks tomorrow. The Lord
doesn't favor fools."

"Sometimes I
wonder about that," Monroe said.

Their shoes
clicked against the concrete beside the stage. The exit door swished
open, closed. The door into the alley clanked open. I got to my feet.
Tom stood up in front of me. From the alley came the sound of the chain
rattling through the brackets. I exhaled and began brushing invisible
dust off my clothes.

"That was
interesting," Tom said. "Monroe turns out to be a good cop. Do you
suppose all three of them will come down?"

"I hope the
two don't show up together."

"Which one do
you think is Fee?"

I saw Ross
McCandless's seamy face and empty eyes leaning toward my hospital bed.
"No hunches," I said.

"I have one."
Tom stretched out his arms and arched his back. He swatted his jacket
and brushed off his knees. Then he walked back to the end of the aisle
and sat down in his old seat.

"Which one?"

"You," he
said, and laughed.

"What is Fee
going to think when he comes back and finds the chain back in place?"

"Oh, that's
going to be helpful."

Tom turned
around and placed his arm on the back of his seat. "He'll think the
reverend came here after someone reported an attempted break-in,
checked the place out, and locked it up again. When he works that out,
he'll be even more confident that he got here first. So he won't be
paying as much attention—he'll be careless."

We settled
back down to wait.

I drifted
into a strained half-sleep. My eyes were open, and I did not dream, but
I began hearing voices speaking just above the level of audibility.
Someone described seeing a blue-eyed baby cut in half beside a dead
fire. A man said that it would catch up with me in a day or two. I
could see everything, another said, I saw my dead friend and his team
leader standing beneath a giant tree. They told me to go on, go on, go
on.

Dark patterns
unfolded and moved in the air before me, shifting as the voices rose
and fell.

Someone spoke
about a rattling chain. The rattle of the chain was important. Couldn't
I hear that the chain was rattling?

The voices
whisked backward into the psychic vault from which they had come, the
darkness stood still, and I sat upright, hearing the chain clanking
over the brackets on the alley doors. A great deal of time had passed,
an hour at least, perhaps two, while I drifted along the border between
sleep and wakefulness. My mouth felt dry and my eyes could not focus.

"Were you
asleep?" Tom asked.

"Will you be
quiet?" I said.

The tail of
the chain struck one of the brackets as it passed through, making a
tinny
clink
!

"Here we go,"
Tom said.

We moved out
of our seats and listened to the key sliding into the lock. The alley
door opened and shut, and a man moved two steps past the alley door.
Harsh light flew around the frame, and then shrank to a yellow glimmer
visible only at a point about waist-high on the frame. It disappeared
as the footsteps ticked away into silence.

Tom and I
looked at each other.

"Should we
wait for him to come back up?"

"Aren't you
curious about what he's doing down there?"

I looked at
him.

"I'd like to
know what it is."

"He'd hear us
on the stairs."

"Not if we
use the office stairs—the wooden ones. They're so old they're soft.
Remember, he's convinced no one else is here." Tom stood up and began
moving quickly and soundlessly up the aisle.

I almost ran
into him at the door. He was sitting on the armrest of the last seat,
bending over. "What are you doing?"

"Taking off
my shoes."

I knelt to
unlace my Reeboks.

We moved out
into the lobby and padded past the church equipment to the office door.
I whispered something about his being able to hear us unlocking it.

"I can take
care of that." Tom took out the length of ribbed cloth and, after
finding the key that fit the office door, pulled out a short length of
soft black cloth, about an eighth of an inch wide. With it came a
small, narrow metal rod that looked like a toothpick. "You can only use
these once, and sooner or later it fouls up the lock, but do we care?"

He knelt in
front of the door, wet the tip of the cloth in his mouth, and patiently
worked a small portion into the keyhole. He prodded it into place with
the metal toothpick, then nudged the key in beside it. Most of the rest
of the cloth moved into the slot along with the lock. When he turned
the key, the last of the cloth disappeared. The lock made no sound at
all.

Tom motioned
for me to squat beside him. He leaned toward me to whisper. "We're
going to have to pick up the rack and set it down again. I'll go
through the door first. Count to a hundred, and listen to what's going
on down there. If nothing happens, come down. Don't worry about where I
am."

"You want me
to sneak up on him?"

"Play it by
ear."

"What if he
sees me?"

"Eventually,
he has to see you," Tom said. "Don't tell him that you made the call,
and don't let him see your gun. Give him some stuff about Elvee—say you
couldn't stay away, say you were going to call him as soon as you found
Fontaine's notes."

"And what are
you going to do?"

"Depends on
what he does. Just remember what you know about him."

What I knew
about him?

Without
giving me time to ask what he meant, Tom stood up and slid the door
toward us and went inside. In utter darkness, we moved side by side
toward the rack. My outstretched hands touched smooth fabric, and I
felt my way up the robe to the top of the rack. Tom and I worked our
way to opposite ends, and he whispered, "
Now
," so softly that the
command nearly vaporized before it reached me. I lifted the pole on my
side, and the entire heavy rack went two inches off the floor. The rack
moved with me when I stepped sideways, and then continued to move. I
took another sideways step. Tom and I gingerly lowered the rack, and
its wheels noiselessly met the floor.

I heard his
feet whisper around the rack and groped toward the wall and the
basement door. Suddenly, what we were doing seemed as absurd as the
attempt John Ransom and I had made to capture Paul Fontaine. It was
impossible to go downstairs without making noise. I rubbed sweat off my
forehead. A few cautious steps took me to the wall, and I reached out
for Tom, imagining him easing open the plywood door. My hand touched
nothing but empty air. I moved sideways, still reaching out. I took
another step. My hand brushed the edge of the door, and I nearly banged
it against the wall. I lowered myself back down into a squat, still
trying to find Tom. He wasn't there. I leaned forward and poked my head
over the top of the staircase. In the very faint illumination provided
by a flashlight at the other end of the basement, a dark shape glided
away from the bottom of the stairs and disappeared.

I pushed
myself slowly upright, moving with exaggerated care to keep my knees
from popping, and started counting to one hundred.

I wanted to
keep going until I got to two hundred, maybe two thousand, but I made
myself walk through the opening and set my right foot down on the first
step. Tom had been right—the wood was so soft it was almost furry. I
felt the grain through my sock. I grabbed the rail and went down the
next two steps without making any noise at all. I padded down another
three steps, then another two, and my head finally passed beneath the
level of the floor.

Someone was
sweeping the beam of a flashlight over the floor behind the furnace. I
saw the circle of light leap to the right of the big furnace and then
travel slowly along the floor until it disappeared behind it. A few
seconds later, it reappeared to the left of the furnace and moved
another five or six feet toward the wall of the dressing rooms. Then it
skittered over the floor, looping and circling on the cement until it
steadied again a few feet further from the furnace and began making
another long steady sweep across the floor. Fee was standing behind the
furnace and facing in my direction, looking for something. I thought I
knew what it was.

I moved
slowly down the last five steps. He would not be able to see me even if
he moved around the furnace—all he could see was what fell into the
beam of his flashlight. I came down onto the cement and began walking
carefully toward the place where I remembered seeing the brick pillar.
The man with the flashlight backed up and swung the light wildly over
the floor between the furnace and the dressing rooms. I stopped moving,
and the elongated circle of light swooped over the furnace, throwing
the pipes and conduits above it into stark black silhouette, streaked
across the wall near the stairs, and came to rest on the floor to the
left of the furnace. The man backed up again, and I took a few more
quiet steps toward the invisible pillar.

Judging from
the direction he'd been moving, Tom must have been hidden in the rear
of the basement, probably behind the crate of marquee letters. He would
wait until I identified the man with the flashlight before he made his
move. Maybe he would wait until Fee said something incriminating. I
hoped he wouldn't wait until Fee started shooting.

Another quiet
step, then another, took me to the spot where I had seen the pillar. I
felt the air in front of me, but not the pillar. I took a third step
forward. The beam of light was making big sideways sweeps over the
territory to the right of the furnace as Fee began a more systematic
search. I moved sideways without bothering to check the air with my
hands and bumped right into the pillar. It didn't make any more noise
than an auto wreck. The light stopped moving. I pressed up against the
side of the pillar, drenched in sweat.

"Who's
there?" The voice sounded much calmer than I was.

I felt around
for the back of the pillar and stepped behind it, hoping that Tom
Pasmore would come forward out of the darkness.

"Who are you?"