Winter at Death's Hotel (43 page)

“I'd really rather not.”

“If you get afraid of that gun, you might was well throw it down the outhouse right now. Now you put that hand out and sight good on that plate and shoot.”

When she had shot the five cartridges and she couldn't hear and her wrist hurt and the tunnel was full of smoke—and she hadn't hit the plate, or even the chair—Marion took the gun, loaded a single round into it, and fired. The plate whanged and bounced. “Well, it isn't as bad as it could be.” She took Louisa's wrist and swiveled it around and said “That hurt?” and decided that Louisa should shoot with both hands. “And try keeping your eyes open this time.”

The second five were not so bad as the first. The third five were better still, and she nicked the edge of the plate and felt very pleased with herself. Marion kept up a steady nagging—“Don't hunch! Stop squinting! You flinched. You flinched again—what're you scared of? Don't point it at me!”

Halfway through the fourth five, Marion turned the electric lights off and told Louisa to shoot. A blinding flare of light was added to the noise and the recoil. When the lights came on again, Marion said, “Just in case you want to shoot in the dark, you know what to expect.”

“I still can't see.”

“You'll get over it. All right, shoot up that lot, then we'll try some longs.”

The longs proved to be not much worse than the shorts. Or was it that she was getting used to them? Then Marion said that was enough, and there was enough smoke in there to cure a ham with, and she had to go and get her dinner before the show, and let's get out of here.

Walking across Madison Square, as Louisa insisted on doing, Marion said, “You going to carry that thing around with you?”

“Should I?”

“Well, it won't do any good in a drawer under your spare garters, will it.”

“A woman I met told me she always carries a gun.”

“Grand, if you know what you're doing. Fact is, I carry one myself sometimes, depending. Purse or pocket? That's the choice a woman's got. A man can carry a gun in a holster up under his arm, but women's clothes are too tight. Maybe in your handbag, hon.”

Louisa offered to pay her, but Marion McCousins declined. “Men say, ‘professional courtesy.' I say we're both women.”

Back in her room, Louisa tried putting the gun in one of her handbags, but her bags were all made of cloth and were small, and they sagged under the weight. She put her hand back into the pocket that each of her dresses had next to her bustle. A slit in the fabric gave access deep enough that her hand went in well above her wrist. She put the gun in, then walked around her room. She could feel the weight of it, both in the pull on her waist and in the swing of the skirt, but it was bearable. When she sat, she had to sit a little sideways so that she didn't sit right on the unyielding chunk of steel. But it was doable.

She cleaned the barrel and the cylinder as Marion had shown her, with a rod (actually a knitting needle) and a bit of rag and a viscous fluid that Marion had provided. Then, hesitatingly, she put a .32 long into each chamber and closed the gun and put it into her pocket. She thought of what would happen if it went off there.

I'd be limping for the rest of my life. Or worse.

But were her fears any less?

Her answer at that moment would have been no, but when she saw the afternoon papers, she felt a rush of relief that was like the sweetness of cold water on a hot day.

POLICE CAPTURE
BOWERY BUTCHER

“We Have Our Man”—Roosevelt
Gigolo Confesses

Revenge
on Women for Husband's Rejection of His Demands

That was the
Evening
Sun
. The other papers had the same story, headlines more or less lurid, depending on their tastes. “FEMALE MUTILATOR WITHOUT REMORSE AT CAPTURE,” “LOVE TRIANGLE LED TO ATROCITIES,” “MURDER SQUAD GRABS MANIAC—BUTCHER IN SHACKLES!” She went back to the
Evening
Sun
for the details, feeling light headed, disoriented: could it really be true?

Detective-Sergeant F. B. Dunne apprehended Gerald Oppenheimer at his sordid room on the far West Side as the city finished its lunch hour and returned to work yesterday. Assisted by Detective L. Cassidy, Dunne, head of the Butcher investigation since the recent cataclysm in the Murder Squad, took along no uniformed police to make the nab.

“There was no resistance,” Dunne told us. “He came along like a lamb.” Dunne said that the arrest was the product of weeks of detective work of the most careful and detailed kind. “We mapped his movements, based on sightings before and after the murders. They led to Oppenheimer's room.”

The suspect is now in the lock-up at 300 Mulberry Street, where, we hear, the efforts of trained police interrogators have already produced a confession. One police source said they were sure of the first “butcher” murder, that of Mrs. Roscoe Harding, and were confident that the killer would confess to murders two and three within hours. Oppenheimer's connection with Mrs. Harding has been confirmed by two witnesses, George Manion and Daniel Gerrigan, both of the New Britannic Hotel, where they saw the pair together.

There was a lot of speculation in all the papers about what sort of man Oppenheimer was and why he had done the killings. “Gigolo” was used almost universally; certainly it seemed that Oppenheimer, described by the
Times
as “sleekly handsome in a reptilian fashion,” had made a profession of preying on women. To Louisa, there seemed a contradiction there (if he made money preying on women, why did he kill them?), but she wanted to believe that the killer had been caught. Arthur always made a good deal of what he called “motive” in his stories, but the police didn't seem to care for it as much, because no motive was given. Perhaps that was the result of their experience of real criminals, as opposed to Arthur's imaginary ones. Perhaps real criminals didn't have motives. Or perhaps in real life motive was too obscure to unravel.

At any rate, it was over.

She could say that to herself, but the words didn't seem to get past her tongue. Her fears, she found, were still there. She kept the revolver in her pocket.

That evening at her early dinner, Henry Irving stopped by her table and said, “Several of us who have been here for a while are having a little memorial after the theater for poor Newcome. Quite informal, and in no sense a
service
, but only something that can be reported to Mrs. Simmons. I do hope you'll come, even though it will be late. In the music room. To please me?”

“Of course.”

The hotel seemed hushed at half past eleven; only a few people who had been to the theater were in the lobby. Louisa took the lift to the mezzanine and made her way toward the back of the hotel along the far corridor. There were no shops there, but rather specialized rooms for the guests—the reading room, a writing room, a billiard room, a music room. Louisa heard the piano as she neared it.

Inside, Marie Corelli was playing a large Broadwood grand—English, not American, like so much else in the hotel—and Louisa went to her as soon as she stopped.

“I didn't know you were back!”

“Only today,
chérie
, and in a terrible rush at that. I'm off to Albany tomorrow. It's exhausting but it's necessary, yes? You look lovely.” Marie kissed her cheek. “I'm here because of that poor Newcome; I only heard about it when I got back, who'd have expected such a thing? His aunt is a very strange person, though he seemed quite pleasant. Although his sort, you know, they do stupid things when they're on the prowl, if you follow my meaning. Are you here for the memorial? I've bought a mourning card for all of us to sign, and there are to be flowers. I think a contribution of twenty-five cents each would be more than generous; we don't want to look showy.”

“Mr. Irving asked me to come.”

“I'm supposed to sing, though I don't know anything that suits the death of a man. I suppose Gluck. Will you come to a summoning in my room?”

“For Newcome?”

“No, no, my dear, for
Azul
. I have the most exciting things to tell you about Azul, who almost manifested himself in my room! I've thought and thought about it, and I decided that Azul is afraid of presenting his awesome countenance to only one person, and so perhaps the force of several of us would persuade him to show himself. I had wanted Mrs. Simmons because she is
bien
spirituelle
, although not of my persuasion, but it would be bad taste to ask her just now, no? One is never sure in this debased age. Tomorrow at eleven, which I know is a brutal time, but it's the best I can manage because I have to be at the train at three. I think we'll be six, with you, so you
must
come. It will be a profoundly religious experience. Oh, there's Irving.” She waved.

There were only a dozen people in all. Cody put his head in the door and signed the card and left a dollar but went away again. Marie sang Gluck's “Cosa Faro Senza Euridice?” which was about a dead woman, not a man, but at least the grieving singer was always a soprano. She followed it with the Dead March from
Saul
on the piano. Louisa's thoughts were on the plans and notes and specifications she had read that afternoon: did they really add up to anything? Then Irving recited Tennyson's “Crossing the Bar” and made it seem glorious, but of course Irving could have done the same for “Baa-Baa Black Sheep.” Then an American intoned a dreadful poem called “Thanatopsis,” with gestures, and Louisa went back to the murders and doubts of Dunne's story that the “gigolo” had done them. A woman from Irving's company recited the part of Ecclesiastes about there being a time for everything; and Irving ended it all with Jacques's “seven ages of man” speech, and that was that.

Louisa limped back to her room and undressed and got into bed, but when she hadn't fallen asleep after half an hour of frightening herself with thoughts of crawling through the walls of the hotel—there was a story about that, wasn't there? No, it was wallpaper, crawling through the pattern on yellow wallpaper—she got up and decided to have a bath. It was after midnight; she was unlikely to meet anybody in the corridor, and the Butcher had been caught—hadn't he? She hid herself in her flannel robe and then pulled it tightly around herself and peeked into the corridor. It was empty and silent.

Towel over her arm and soap in hand, she tiptoed quickly down to the bathroom. Normally, it should have been Ethel who drew her baths, but of course she couldn't summon Ethel in the middle of the night. She knocked on the bathroom door, heard nothing, opened the door slowly; it was dark and silent and rather humid in there. The electric light made the wood-paneled room more cheerful. She locked and bolted the door and turned the taps.

Oceans
of
hot
water, thank Heaven! One can't fault Carver for that.

The room grew steamy. She tested the water with a toe, shucked herself out of the robe and sank into the blessed heat. Twenty minutes later, soaped, scrubbed, rinsed, glistening, she rose from the waves and toweled herself as the drain gurgled. It was all very comforting, rather homey. She ached to have her children in the next room to kiss.

The corridor seemed icy after the bathroom. She pulled the door closed behind her and turned toward her own room, thirty feet away. Moving toward it, she kept away from the doors as if she feared somebody's bolting out of them.

Still
fearful, Touie. Still on edge.
She reminded herself that the Butcher had been caught—it could be the good-looking young man, of course it could—as had Newcome's murderer. Dunne had performed splendidly. Even if the hotel were cursed, or at least unlucky, she had nothing to fear from it anymore—she, after all, was now safe in the annex, which wasn't properly part of the centipede of possibly hollow walls at all. She thought of the hotel plan, the centipede, the tons of volcanic stone. Her interpretation of it seemed far fetched now—and, anyway, she was in a different building. She was
safe.

But she didn't feel safe.

She had almost reached her room when the door from the annex into the hotel opened. It was only another ten feet along, at the end of the corridor. Louisa clutched the neck of her robe and tried to hurry to her door, her key out to go into the lock.

A strange figure lurched through the hotel door. One word rang through her head:
Man.
But what a man!

He was tall and stooped, visibly broad in the shoulders despite a greasy, billowing robe that was spotted with drippings of old meals. He wore some sort of pajamas under the robe, the top and bottoms mismatched. His feet were bare and bulged with corns and bunions. His head was huge, ringed on the sides and back with white hair down to his jawline.

Yet it was his face that caused her to back against the wall. It was scarlet and it bulged with boil-like pustules; the nose was misshapen and swollen; the skin on the cheeks and forehead looked like badly ploughed red earth, scored with fissures in which old dirt had lodged. She thought
leprosy
, although she had never seen a leper.

He saw her. He smiled. The smile became a leer, showing yellow-brown teeth. He charged toward her, his balance bad, almost careering against a wall with a shoulder, then catching himself and reaching out toward her.

“Show me your titties!” He was whispering. “I'll give you a nickel if you show me your titties! Let me see them…”

He was reaching for her. She cringed, fought him off with her left hand as she held the robe closed with her right. He was astonishingly strong for an old man; he held her wrist and twisted her arm away as the other hand reached for the top of her robe. She tried to hit him with her keys, struck his ear. She felt the fabric of the robe tear and then the front buttons popping.

“Tits! I see your tits!” He was still talking in an urgent, hoarse whisper.

She screamed.

He was trying to press himself against her. She thrust at him with her key, felt it contact flesh; she tried to kick him, aware of doors opening along the corridor, and she screamed again. He was trying to put a hand inside the robe to open it below her waist, and she tried to catch his hand and to twist away from him.

Then other people were around them. Two men in pajamas were pulling at her attacker; she yanked the robe around herself, although they must have seen her, bare to the waist. Now the old man began to scream. It was a child's cry, high-pitched and terrified. He howled, “She hurt me! She hurt me!”

The door to the hotel opened again. Louisa was trying to get her key into the lock of her own door, but her hands were shaking so that she couldn't do it. Galt came through, young Carver right behind him. Galt had a strait-waistcoat.

“Mr. Carver! Mr. Carver!” Galt pushed aside one of the men who had hold of the old man. “Let me deal with him—please—Mr. Carver! It's Galt—it's Galt, remember? Mr. Carver?—Galt, your nurse?…” He turned back to the younger Carver. “Give me the gag.”

Old Carver was still keening, making a sound that Louisa knew a rabbit made when a dog got it. Galt snatched a canvas and leather thing like a brank from young Carver's fingers. He put it over the old man's head; there was a lot of twisting and screaming. Young Carver joined the guests in holding his father.

By now there were half a dozen people in nightclothes in the corridor. One of them was berating young Carver for the interruption of his sleep.

Galt got the thing on the old man's head and strapped it tight behind. It held his jaws clamped and allowed him to breathe only through his nose. As soon as it was on and tightened, the old man sagged into the arms of the men holding him, his weight so great that one of them almost let him go. Galt said, “Hold him, I'll only be a moment now.” He slid a canvas sleeve up one of the old man's arms with the deftness of long practice. The old man's eyes went to Louisa. Was he smiling inside his mask?

Galt flipped the old man's arm behind him and pushed him face first into the wall and began to work the other sleeve up his right arm.

“You can all go to bed,” young Carver was saying. “Please go to bed now. We do apologize for this unfortunate event. One of our guests from the hotel. A seizure. Of course, you won't be charged for tonight's stay. With the hotel's compliments—please—please return to your beds…”

Galt was panting. He had both of the old man's arms in the jacket now. He began to buckle straps that would hold the arms across the old man's back. Galt said, “I'm so sorry, Mrs. Doyle. I don't know how he got out. Please—when he's like this—I know it was horrible for you. It's my fault, of course it's my fault—he doesn't know what he's doing…”

She had managed to get her key into the lock at last. She opened her door and stumbled inside. She heard young Carver say, “Mrs. Doyle, please—this was a misunderstanding—!” Then she was slamming the door and bolting it, and she leaned against it and wept.

I'm so frightened. I'm such a coward.
And then,
He
knew
me!

She wanted to get back into her bath. She wanted to soap herself, to wash every part of her he'd touched, as if he carried some contagion.
That
face
.

She lay down on her bed and wept. She wanted somebody to help her, to hold her, but nobody came. She thought she should call the police, but the telephones were in the lobby and she would have to go into the hotel, where
he
was.

Gradually, as the shock faded, her weeping stopped and she was able to sit up. She felt as weak as she had in Davos. Her knees felt too watery to hold her up. Her hands were still shaking. At last, she went into her water closet and threw up. She washed herself at the small sink. She put on a thick, warm nightgown and a different robe and sat by her window in the dark, trembling.

She thought of his whispered
I'll give you a nickel if you'll show me your titties
. Had he really said that to children? To young girls? Is that what he'd done in his hotel, too—spied on the female guests? Ever since it was built?

And
had
he known her—because he'd spied on her?
Stolen
her
soiled
drawers?

She thought of what she'd learned in his office that afternoon. None of it seemed ridiculous now. He must have planned the hollow walls from the beginning. The architect must never have understood what old Carver was really about. Not, at any rate, until the hotel had been half finished and they had poured the crushed rock.

And
then, did Carver kill him? Push him off the roof at night? And take a photograph of the corpse in the morning?

She shuddered. Was there still more to it? Had the old man found murder to his liking? Had he watched the French maid making love to her mistress's husband and then killed her? Had he watched the copper-haired woman making love to her lover and then murdered her?

But what of the other killings? Suppose the young “gigolo” hadn't done them. Suppose…

***

A single figure walked along the pavement of one of the finer streets in Brooklyn Heights. He walked slowly, like a man with a burden, and when he came to his destination, he slowed, then stopped, might have been prepared to turn back, but after several seconds he went up the steps of a brownstone and rang the bell. Late as it was, there were footsteps in the house; an electric light went on over the door; the door opened.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Grady tried to make his voice bright. “Agh, I couldn't sleep, Jack, thinking of you and me. I thought I'd chew over our difficulties together. Brothers in arms, like.”

Cleary stared out at him. He needed a shave; he wasn't wearing a necktie and his waistcoat was unbuttoned; he smelled of whiskey. Grady drew a pint from his pocket. “I brought some of the Irish.”