Dead to Me (15 page)

“What is all this?” Irene asked again.

I took a deep breath and choked down my discomfort. “Superman has his Fortress of Solitude. Batman has his Bat Cave. I have this.”

“Oh God,” she said with a look of half-joking horror. “You think you’re a superhero!”

I laughed and shook my head. “No, not at all. I’m not delusional, I swear. But those characters, fictional though they are, have one thing in common. A place to hang their cape, a secret place away from the outside world where they feel truly themselves…truly safe. This is it for me—or as close as it gets. This is my safety room. This is where I come when I fear my abilities.”

The look on Irene’s face only needed to have a light bulb coming to life over her head to complete it. “This is your inner sanctum. Your holy place.”

I nodded. She actually got it and I could have kissed her.

“It’s rather stark,” she said. “Why does it look like it was designed after heaven’s waiting room?”

“Everything else in this apartment is potentially loaded with other people’s thoughts,” I said. “That box by the front door was a prime example. I need a place that is clean of any potential triggers. A place I can retreat to, where I know I’m in control.”

She had stopped staring and started checking out the contents of the room. “And all this furniture…?”

“Straight from the manufacturer,” I said. The slightest twinge of pride tugged at my heart. “I know it seems obsessive, but given the nature of my power, I really had to go out of my way to get items that were least likely to trigger an episode. Each piece of furniture is brand new, never touched except by the machines that crafted their basic components. I even picked them up direct from the warehouse myself because I didn’t want deliverymen handling them. I assembled them and finished the job using the same coat of white on everything in the room. Fresh paint mixed up right in the store seems to dull the psychic impressions most.”

Irene walked around the room. Her footsteps made no sound whatsoever.

“You know,” she said with a grin, “psychologists would have a field day with your disorder.”

“This chair,” I continued, ignoring her comment. “It’s from a store in the Bowery. It had been sitting among the back stock for years, but it was just what I had been looking for—something new, unused, and relatively untouched for a long period of time. You should have seen how absolutely hideous it was before I painted and recushioned it.”

“Aren’t you a regular albino Martha Stewart!” she said and attempted to touch my face with the palm of her hand. I felt a mild sensation, like the shock from shag carpeting. This time, however, the small burst of energy wasn’t the same as before. This one felt mildly pleasurable and far less jarring. I let the moment stretch out as long as I could before I felt self-conscious. I stood and moved toward the door.

“I should probably show you your room now,” I said. “Your right room, that is.”

I laughed, hating how forced it sounded. I put on my best stern face and pointed my finger. “Youfollowme this time.”

I felt like a total dork. Why was I rambling around her?I am notfalling for her, I told myself.Dead girl walking .

As I debated the finer points of what branch of necroeroticism this would fall under, I locked the door behind us. I pocketed the keys as I felt a crackle of electricity on my arm. Irene’s hand was on it, sending another shiver through my body, one I was sure had nothing to do with the simple shock.

“Are you going to be all right, Simon?” she asked.

I nodded. “I will be. Thanks. But listen…”

She waited silently as I collected my thoughts.

“You can’t tell anyone about the White Room,” I continued. “Please. I hate even having to mention it, but it’s extremely important to me.”

“You don’t have to worry,” she said. Her voice sounded reassuring, but then she smirked. “Why would I tell anyone about that, my intrepid young gumshoe, when there are all those juicy homoerotic visions of yours to tell your fellow employees about?”

She floated off, laughing, and in that moment, I desperately wished that Irene were alive. Not because of my strange attraction to her, or that she was someone I could picture myself dating, but because it would be easier to strangle her smart ass that way.

11

Since I wasn’t used to having guests in my loft, I spent the rest of my night staring at my ceiling, tossing, turning, and wondering if Irene was also lying awake off in my guest room. Exhaustion eventually washed over me, though, and before I knew it, I awoke to the shrill cry of the alarm going off. I crept to the open door of the guest room, where I could make out the curled-up shape of Irene. I wasn’t sure what the cosmic rules were concerning the sleeping habits of ghosts, but Irene was resting peacefully on top of the sheets, hovering over them slightly. I didn’t have the heart to wake her before I left. What was she going to do with herself if I did wake her anyway? Float around the office until I had figured out what exactly to do with her? She was better off hidden here in my apartment.

When I caught up with Connor over coffee at the Lovecraft, I purposefully neglected telling him that Irene had stayed at my apartment, even though the subject of Irene andher apartment were on the table.

We jumped a cab on Eleventh Street and rode uptown to Columbus Circle. Although Irene’s building was in the Seventies, we got out near Trump’s latest eyesore and walked along the tree-lined length of Central Park West until we came across her building, which was a far better architectural wonder. The Westmore looked as if it were straight out of a Tim Burton movie. Gothic-era gargoyles with their mouths agape laughed at some sinister secret.

We entered the Westmore’s red and gold lobby and were confronted with an elderly doorman whose dusty jacket looked like it had seen better days. A button was missing from the front of it, and judging by the size of his pot belly, I could imagine it had flown across the room whenever it had popped. We didn’t have a game plan for getting past him, but Connor patted me on the back.

“All yours, kid,” he said, and leaned against the wall with his arms folded.

I stepped forward to the tiny counter the man stood behind. His hand moved automatically for the house phone.

“Whose apartment may I ring for you, sir?”

“Irene Blatt, please,” I said. It killed me just saying her last name.

A look crossed the old man’s face and he lowered the phone back to its cradle. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure if Ms. Blatt is in right now.”

Sincewe knew that the lady of the house was dead, andI knew her spirit was holed up in my apartment, I was pretty sure that Irene wouldn’t be answering her phone.

Connor stepped up to the doorman’s desk and nudged me out of the way.

“Excuse us a moment, won’t you, Simon?” he said. I moved away from the reception area, and Connor lowered his voice to the point where I could no longer hear. Whether he used some form of mind trick or simply slipped the codger a hundred, I didn’t know, but suddenly the doorman was hurrying us into one of the mahogany-lined elevators. He pressed the button, tipped his hat, and we were on our way.

“Sorry ’bout that, kid,” Connor said. “I could already tell he was suspicious. We should be quick about this, though, just in case.”

“What the hell did you do to him down there?” I asked.

“Sorry, kid. Classified.”

I was hoping for more of a clue as to what had just transpired, but the look on his face told me it wasn’t up for discussion.

After several silent floors, he changed the subject. “The view of Central Park must be spectacular.”

“For what it probably costs to live here, the view better be,” I said.

The elevator slowed and the doors slid open with a gentlebing onto an enormous hallway that could have easily held my whole apartment. There were only three doors. One was markedSTAIRS , and the other two were set on either side of the elevator. When we stepped out, Connor walked to the one on our right. I reached for the doorbell, but he grabbed me by the wrist and shook his head.

“Let me handle this, kid,” Connor said.

I pulled my arm away. I was pissed at him for taking charge again. How was I supposed to learnanything with him always taking the lead? I could have handled anyone who answered the door, dammit.

Connor put on his best game face as he prepared to greet whoever might answer. It was the one he put on to look as mundane as a door-to-door insurance salesman. He rang the bell and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said after the first minute had passed, and pushed Connor out of the way. I dropped to my knees directly in front of the door, took off my gloves, and pulled several thin metal strips from the cuff of my jacket.

I slid two of the strips into the keyhole and flexed my fingers slightly as I felt around for the tumblers. Connor gave me a look of disapproval.

“What?” I said. “Clearly no one’s home and I don’t think Irene would mind if we had a look around.”

“Did you requisition those from the supply room?” Connor asked, peeved.

“No,” I said testily. “They’re mine. Holdovers from my days as a petty thief.”

“Did they get rid of the screening process in HR?”

“Can I help it that some of my criminal skills come in handy every so often? Besides, breaking and entering in the name of Good feels a whole lot better.”

“May I remind you that it’s still breaking and entering?”

“Not if we’ve got permission from the owner!” I fired back. “And we’ve got it.”

“I’d love to see you explain it to the cops,” Connor said. “It doesn’t matter if she gave us her permission, kid, since she’s dead.”

There was no love lost between the Department of Extraordinary Affairs and the NYPD. The NYPD resented us because they had been told countless times by David Davidson at the Office of Plausible Deniability that we didn’t even exist, and yet they were still supposed to cooperate with us.

“Irene’s not totally dead,” I reminded Connor.

I continued searching for the right combination of positions within the lock, but I was rusty with the whole lock-picking thing.

“She seems pretty dead to me, kid,” he said, leaning against the wall as I worked. “We’ll probably find pictures of her husband and kids in here, too. One big happy family. One big happy family who’ll come home in the middle of our breaking and entering, and demand an explanation as to why we’re in their apartment.”

“She’snot married,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound so defensive.

“How do you knowthat ?” Connor asked, but I met him with silence, under the pretense of being too busy working the lock. He wasn’t falling for it. “I knew it! Youare interested in her.”

I tried to ignore him and threw all my concentration into picking the lock—and was rewarded when the tumblers finally clicked. I hadn’t picked a lock in forever, wasn’t even sure I’d be able to until it happened just now, but I felt a little swell of pride at the familiar sound of a door giving way.

“I’m shocked,” Connor said with mock sincerity. He stepped back to allow room for me to stand up and swing the door fully open. “Does anyone at the Department know about your little transgressive skills?”

I nodded. “I think so. I bet the F.O.G.ies have already blacklisted me because of it.”

“You’ve only been with the D.E.A. a few months,” Connor replied. He pushed his way forward, crowding me. “Wait until you’ve been working there a couple of years. Even then, the F.O.G.ies are secretive and it’s almost impossible to guess who they’ll choose.”

“Well,” I said as I motioned for Connor to follow me through the door into the darkness of the apartment, “I doubt my criminal past would pass muster at the Fraternal Order of Goodness’s membership drive.”

“They took Inspectre Quimbley, kid, so I’m not so sure about that.”

I rolled my eyes, but the effect was lost on Connor in the darkened room. The Inspectre a troublemaker? He had been myHow to Distinguish an East Villager from a Satanist instructor during my initial three weeks of evening classes, and he didn’t seem the badass type despite the legends of his past honors. The Inspectre, an old-school rapscallion? I couldn’t imagine it.

“I don’t think that our befuddled Inspectre has any dark secrets to hide, Connor.”

As we moved farther into the apartment, the sounds of Connor fumbling in the dark came from off to my left somewhere, sounding not unlike a herd of elephants.

“Those old boysall have dark secrets to hide,” he said. “That’s probably half the reason F.O.G. exists, so they can have one collective burial ground for all their bad mojo.”