Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (38 page)

When one morning I came down and found that the plywood had finally been removed from the front entrance, I felt considerable relief and, by this time, even eagerness to get outside again. They had done surprisingly extensive work. There was new carpeting throughout the entrance hall, and the old hinged door had been replaced by a revolving door. The revolving door was a new problem for me, although it was obvious enough how I would get through it. I would have to wait until someone approached it alone from the other side, and then, when he pushed his way into it, I would jump in just as a full quadrant opened on my side, dance around as the door turned, and jump out again, being careful not to push or be pushed by the revolving glass panels. (I do it all the time now, although I still dislike it.)

I walked through the entrance hall up to the door, keeping on the marble floor along the wall so that my footsteps would not show up in the thick new carpeting. Bill had half an eye on the entrance, and I knew that as soon as anyone appeared, he would be all attention. His apprentice, on the other hand, was staring off at the ceiling with evident boredom. His heart did not seem to be in his work, and it seemed likely that he would not ultimately prove suited for the job of doorman at the Academy Club.

I waited for nearly a quarter of an hour before a member by the name of Oliver Haycroft appeared. He climbed the three steps up to the threshold and then hesitated at the sight of the revolving door, as if somewhere in his rather rudimentary mental machinery there was some recognition that this entrance, which he had passed through regularly for twenty years, was somehow different. He would have liked to be sure: if he could establish with certainty that there had been a change of some sort, he would want to complain about it. This uncharacteristic moment of hesitation passed: whatever may have been the case in the past, there was definitely a revolving door here now, and he stepped forward to push his way through it. I moved quickly, taking one quick toe-step onto the carpet so that I was poised before the opening, ready to enter it when the door was in the right position. I was dimly aware of a faint buzzer going off somewhere in the background. As Haycroft pushed the door and stepped into his quadrant, I took a symmetrical step into mine, at the same time glancing back at the desk, where I sensed some movement. Bill’s assistant was suddenly hunched over rigidly, his hands reaching oddly under the desk and his gaze fixed intently on the door. Bill was turned sideways, staring at him with a look of consternation.

All wrong.

As Haycroft pushed the door around, I pulled back out of it, nearly losing a foot, and hopped off the carpet again. The door turned ninety degrees and, with the sharp clicking sound of metal latches snapping into place, came to an abrupt halt, leaving Haycroft caught in the middle. He pushed forward against the door several times, leaning his weight into it, and then leaned backwards in an attempt to push it back the other way. He was trapped, and so would I have been.

Bill looked agonized at the sight of Haycroft shouting and banging angrily on the walls of his glass cage. Suddenly Morrissey was standing there, looking at the situation appraisingly and giving instructions to the assistant doorman, who was inserting some sort of key first into the bottom and then into the top of the door on Haycroft’s side. One of the glass panels swung free, and Haycroft stepped shakily out into the lobby.

“Hell of a door,” Haycroft said in what seemed meant to be an angry bluster but had a slightly plaintive quality.

“Yes, sir,” said Bill. “I’m very sorry, sir. It’s new. It’s not working properly.” He looked resentfully at his putative assistant. “I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

“I certainly hope not. I don’t know what was wrong with the old door.”

Haycroft looked darkly at Morrissey, obviously wondering who he was and what right he had to be there, but afraid that he could not ask without risking his dignity. Then, seeing that neither Morrissey nor Bill’s assistant was going to show any deference or even interest in him, Haycroft turned and headed for the staircase.

“I’ll be on the second floor,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” said Bill uncomfortably.

“I followed the orders exactly, but I don’t get it,” the assistant doorman was saying to Morrissey. “The buzzer just went off by itself. I set the door anyway, like I was supposed to, but that guy was outside when it went off. No one was anywhere near the carpet, but it definitely went off.” He seemed mainly concerned that he might have done something for which he would be censured.

Morrissey, ignoring him, was talking into some sort of telephone.

“We’ve got him… In the main door… Yeah, ninety-nine percent sure… He has to be… Sure. The other entrance is secure. We’ve got him.”

It struck me that, whatever I planned to do next, I should offer them some encouragement now, so I leaned over, being careful not to step on the rug again, and pushed on the door, several times, causing it to rattle.

“One hundred percent he’s in there. I can hear him.”

Outside, a van was backing up across the sidewalk to the steps, and several people dressed as workmen were erecting a sort of plywood enclosure around the entrance. I recognized Clellan among them. As I watched, more workmen appeared inside the entrance hall and under Morrissey’s direction began opening out a folding screen across the entrance. As my view was closed off, I saw the men outside dragging a large, cagelike device, the size of a man, up towards the door.

In a moment they would be opening up the other side of the door, expecting to find me inside, and I abruptly realized that if I were not out of the Club by then, I might never get out. The trouble was I could not get the porter to buzz me out the service entrance unless someone happened to be going through.

I ran down the edge of the hall, avoiding the carpet, and halfway up the stairs behind Haycroft, who had almost reached the top.

“Fire!” I called out as loudly and urgently as I could without Morrissey hearing. Still rattled by his experience with the door, Haycroft started and turned to see who was calling. The sight of the empty stairway bewildered him further. I cupped my hands, hoping he would think someone was shouting up from the lobby, and called out again.

“Fire! Please proceed directly to the service entrance and leave the building as promptly as possible.” Haycroft stood there immobile, with a baffled look on his face.

“For Christ’s sake, Haycroft! There are people dying up there!
Run!”
At that, he finally got it all straight in his mind and ran, thundering down the stairs past me.

“Hurry, for God’s sake. Everyone out!” I exhorted, to keep him moving. “It’s horrible, people dying like that!”

I turned and followed him back down the stairs, across the end of the lobby, and out through the metal door into the vestibule of the service entrance. The door swung shut behind me, leaving the two of us locked in the short corridor. Haycroft turned to the porter sitting behind the counter, who would have to buzz him out.

It was not the usual porter. It was Gomez. He looked up at Haycroft and said, in a not particularly deferential tone, “This door is closed.”

“Well, open it! I know it’s closed.”

“This door can’t be opened now.”

“I don’t know what’s going on here” — Haycroft was screaming now— “but I’m a member of this place, and these doors are here for the convenience of the members, and you’d better open that goddamn door right now or—”

Gomez, seeing that he was creating a problem for himself and being smarter than Haycroft, promptly changed his tone. “That’s right, sir. I’m very, very sorry.” He sounded extremely earnest, and his accent, which normally is almost undetectable, was suddenly quite pronounced. “We got a security problem here, sir. An unauthorized person in the building. We got orders to keep all these exits closed until we apprehend him. If you could go back in and wait upstairs, sir, it’s only going to be a few minutes.”

“The building’s on fire! Get that door open!”

Gomez looked startled. Watching Haycroft intently, he picked up the housephone, dialed two digits, and waited. Haycroft had stopped shouting and was waiting with anguish on his face for Gomez to complete his call.

I had my penknife out and was trying to identify and extract the little knife blade.

“Hello. This is Gomez.” I had the blade open and was sawing into the telephone wire where it ran up the wall at the end of the counter. “I have someone here who says there’s a fire in the… Hello? Hello!”

Gomez was flipping the cradle bar up and down. “Hello!” He wouldn’t notice the little half cut in the wire. Without taking his eyes off Haycroft, he stepped back from the counter to a small wooden desk and picked up another telephone.

Haycroft was shouting again. “The phones are out! For God’s sake, do your job and open the door before we’re trapped in here!” Gomez watched him warily, but made no reply. He began dialing.

Grabbing hold of the counter, I swung myself over it and slid down onto the floor on the other side. Crouching under the counter, I located the two buzzer buttons, one for each of the doors. The trouble was that if I pushed the one for the exit door, Haycroft would be out and the door closed again long before I could get to it. I got my knife open again and began digging and poking through thirty years of paint until I got the blade under the wires that ran to the button. I prized them loose, ripped them free of the button, and pressed the bare ends together, feeling the electric shock run through my fingers. The moment the wires touched, the buzzer began to sound, and Haycroft pushed his way through the door and was gone. I gave the wires a twist to hold them together and dove over the counter.

“Hey, hold it!” Gomez was shouting. He was still talking to Haycroft, I think, and there was an expression of incomprehension on his face as he stared at the door and listened to the buzzer. But when I thudded onto the floor and scrambled toward the exit, he understood perfectly what was happening. Gomez was running toward me with a gun in his hand. As I crouched down and pushed open the door, I heard the gun go off once and then twice more, as I raced down the alley and out onto the street.

I
was trembling as I walked down Park Avenue. as much as I had brooded over the past weeks about being noticed, I had never really doubted that I would go on living in the Academy Club indefinitely, and I had never given a moment’s thought to where else I might go. It was with an underlying feeling of panic that I tried to consider what to do next.

The panic, I suppose, came from the recognition that the whole thing had been an illusion. Jenkins had never stopped searching for me, and I had never been safe at the Academy Club. There had never been any possibility of my being able to stay there. Just as I had figured out that it was the best place for me to go to ground, he had figured it out too. What was worse, I could still not think of anything better than going to another club — which meant that they would be waiting for me to do just that. I could see that it was hopeless, but what choice did I have? Where else could I sleep and eat and find shelter from the weather? There were the hotels, but they would only be more dangerous than the clubs, brighter and more crowded. I could certainly not go back to my apartment. And I could not risk confiding in anyone.

Perhaps I could have stayed inside the Academy Club and let them try to run me down there. I was still not sure that they could have done it. But I was shaken by the amount of cooperation they clearly had gotten from the Club. A disgrace. I ought to write a letter to the board. Or get Anne Epstein to write something in the
Times.
INTELLIGENCE
AGENCY
CARRIES
OUT
ILLEGAL
OPERATIONS
IN
EXCLUSIVE
MANHATTAN
MEN’S
CLUB
. It occurred to me that I had no idea what agency it was that Jenkins worked for, or for that matter whether his name was really Jenkins. I had nothing to tell Anne. I did not even know myself who was pursuing me. Suddenly I conceived an urgent need to speak to Jenkins directly. I had to confront the problem directly, I told myself. I would explain, reasonably but firmly, that I had no choice but to offer him a simple alternative: he would leave me in peace or I would shoot him. I had the means to do it, and he would have to take me seriously. I had, after all, shot Tyler, I reminded myself. And whether or not the threat was effective, I would be better off establishing contact. I would get some sense of what they were thinking and doing. To wander around through the city like this without knowing anything would be unbearable. I had to talk to someone. It struck me that I had not spoken to another human being for over a month. Jenkins, now that I thought about it, was the one person in the world I could really speak to openly.

I remembered again that I had no idea how to reach Jenkins, nothing except Leary’s telephone number. Well, they knew that. They would be expecting me to use that telephone number if I wanted to talk to them. They would probably be waiting and hoping for my call. Perhaps Leary’s number rang wherever Jenkins worked. Anyway, they would have some way to get him on the line or to put through my call. It was a call Jenkins would be eager to get. I imagined his amazement when they told him I was calling, and I almost began to look forward to hearing the pleasure in his voice when he came on the line.

I assumed they would trace the call, and I wished I had more information than you get from watching movies about how the procedure worked and how long it took. But however quickly they did the tracing of the telephone line, it would take some time to get to wherever I was, and I would call from someplace that would be easy to get out of and hard to close off. I walked west to the Midtown Athletic Club, where I went in through the front entrance and around behind the main staircase to a small hall with four telephone booths in a little dead end. They were real booths, each with a chair and a writing ledge and a glass-windowed door which, when closed, turned on a light inside. There were booths like these scattered throughout the building, but these were the nearest to the entrance. I went into the one on the end, tore a sheet off the pad of notepaper left for the convenience of the members, wrote on it out of order, and slid it between the windowpane and the frame so it would be visible from outside. Unscrewing the light bulb and turning in my chair so that I would see anyone approaching in plenty of time to hang up the receiver, I dialed Leary’s number.