Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

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It’s dusk before she feels free of the drug’s effects. She’d driven north, passing out of her native state and jumping on and off all the eerie New England highways that were cut through solid granite hills. The highways have smooth rock walls running on either side of them, rising up thirty feet high so that nothing can be seen but the road ahead. Over a period of time, they can cause a subtle claustrophobia. Lenore noted this as a secondary concern.

For lunch, she’d grabbed french fries from a drive-through burger chain visible from the road. By dinner, she felt safe enough to stop in at a small, lazy diner in a town she’d never heard of. She ordered soup and tea with milk, thinking this would soothe a nervous system so pushed beyond its liberal limits that a shutdown was not out of the question.

By seven, she’s back in Quinsigamond. She drives by the green duplex, but finds it in darkness. At ten, she’s still seated in the Barracuda, staring up at the back of the Hotel Penumbra, waiting until the top floor’s lights go on. She thinks about writing some kind of note and securing it to the steering wheel. An apology to Ike, begging him to forget the past week, maybe the past year, stating flat out her inability to explain both last night and this morning.

She thinks about leaving several notes: Instructions on what to do with any of her belongings that Ike doesn’t want. A word of encouragement to Shaw and Peirce. Advice to Zarelli to accept his shortcomings and learn to find pleasure in his family again. And something for Fred. What could she say to Fred?

The possibilities make her too uncomfortable to continue, so she scraps the note idea entirely and climbs out of the car. The Magnum is in the trunk, but she’s still got the.38 strapped near her ankle. She walks around the block to the front of the building and stops at the revolving door as a parade of Cortez’s women file out for the evening. They’re all dressed like it was Halloween and everyone chose the same costume.

Looking through the doors into the lobby, she sees Jimmy Wyatt trying to act stone-faced to the last of the women’s comments. When he sees Lenore, his hand instinctively jumps to the inside of his biker jacket, but when she doesn’t move, it stays there. They stare at each other for a while until she feels he’s assured she’s not an immediate threat, that this isn’t some bizarre assault, then she pushes her way inside.

She gives Wyatt a small smile, tries to make it look like she’s been unsuccessful at suppressing it. She holds her arms out and up slightly, like a bored version of halting for the police. But he’s not biting. Nothing about her being inside the hotel is going to be playful. His eyes are narrowed on her. She looks away from him to the rest of the lobby. It’s been restored beautifully. Everywhere there are Ionic columns shot through with veins of deep green marble. The lobby has a wonderful, slightly freezing feel to it. There’s a small rise of three stairs beyond Wyatt that opens out into an empty rest area where people once checked in at the front desk and then waited for the elevators. Huge Persian rugs of dark reds and greens cover the marble floor that’s been worn into shallow bowls in spots. Against the walls are couches and chairs, foreign-looking, experiments in furniture that went wrong. And hung above them are these out-of-place pastoral paintings hung in ornate thick gilt frames.

It’s not like a real place, Lenore thinks. Then she turns her eyes back to Wyatt and says casually, “I’m here to see the boss.”

His eyes narrow and she wonders if he’s got a pad of paper tucked away somewhere to communicate.

“Could you tell him I’m here?” she says.

He shakes his head no.

They stare at each other. She hadn’t counted on this.

“Okay,” she says, “I don’t want you to take this wrong, you know, I want to be clear here. You can’t tell him, meaning you’re physically incapable, which I’m aware of? Or you just won’t tell him, as in you don’t want to or you’ve got instructions not to or something like this?”

He waits until she’s finished and simply shakes his head no again.

“Mr. Cortez would want to see me,” she says, lowering her voice. “It would be in his best interest to see me.”

Now he just folds his arms across his chest.

“I don’t want to tell you your job, but I think the thing to do here would be simply to check in upstairs. I’ll wait right here. I won’t budge.”

It’s a standoff. He makes no movement at all. They just continue to look at each other.

“You’re limiting my options,” she says. “You understand that?”

He nods.

“So I’m only left with one avenue here.”

He raises his eyebrows slightly.

“I’m going to have to shoot you in the fucking head.”

He gives a big smile, but she sees his shoulders shift under his jacket and she knows it would be close as to who got to who first.

Then a voice from nowhere: “That’s enough, Jimmy. Show her the elevator.”

It’s Cortez. And he’s been watching and listening to the whole scene. She should have realized that. Cameras and microphones. Probably in every wall.

Wyatt pivots backward and extends a hand forward like the perfect bellman. She waves him off and says, “I can find my way up, thanks.”

She moves past him up the three small stairs to the main lobby and turns left to find a wall of three old-time elevators with the traditional arrow pointers mounted above each door to indicate which level the car is at. The door is already opened on the middle elevator and she steps into the gilded cage and looks to press for the top floor, but there are no buttons. Then it dawns on her that this is the express car, the private car for use by Cortez only. Straight to the top, no stops.

The car bucks slightly, then starts to rise and Cortez’s voice fills the air.

“What a delightful surprise.”

She feels uncomfortable not being able to project her words in a particular direction, but she doesn’t want to make Cortez aware of this.

“In the neighborhood. You know how it is.”

“Actually, no. I don’t get out too often.”

“Is that by choice?”

“Actually, that would be hard to say.”

“You’ve done wonders with this old building.”

“It was a crime. The way I found it. Left to decay.”

“Some things need constant attention. Continual upkeep, you know?”

There’s no response. The elevator comes to a stop with a jerk and the doors slide open. She steps out into a small foyer. The doors immediately close behind her, but she doesn’t hear the car move. She stands still for a minute and takes in the surroundings. It feels about ten or twenty degrees warmer than in the lobby, and yet it’s not uncomfortable. The ceiling hangs a good twelve or more feet high. It’s antique — scrolled tin plating covered with a glossy enamel. The walls are natural mahogany, divided every three or four feet into carved panels. The floor is a burnt-rust-colored tile covered by a large, oval, oriental rug. She stares down at the rug, it draws her attention. It’s filled with an intricate pattern, a confusing weave that works like an Escher print — it shows a pattern of books that, when viewed from a different perspective, become fat-bodied geese in flight.

“Come, please.” Cortez’s voice sounds from nowhere. “Join me in the library.”

The foyer opens into a large hall. Midway down, there are two sets of double doors facing each other. She faces one set, reaches out, and tries to turn the gold lever-handles. They’re locked. She turns around to face the second set and they open for her, revealing an enormous room.