The Sundown Speech (20 page)

“Thanks for coming out. Situation?”

“Hostage. Suspect stuck a gun in the ticket clerk's face and dragged her into the projection room; where they show the movies?”

“I know what a projection room is. Where are the other employees?”

“Evacuated; all except the assistant manager; she's been a big help. She said he shouted something about a bomb.”

“What do you know about it?”

“He was wearing a vest of some kind, and he's got a remote. I got men all over, at all the exits, but he's got the projector on. We can't get a clear shot against the bright light without risking hitting the hostage.”

“What about from outside?”

“I'll let Mrs. Candlemass explain that part. She's the assistant manager.”

He led us inside through plate-glass doors framed in chromium. From the gold-leaf lobby, mahogany staircases swept up like smoke to a carpeted mezzanine. There were frescoes in the arched ceiling panels, cherubim, lions rampant; and that was just the lobby.

It crawled with cops. They stood on the carpeted steps curving gracefully to the gilded balcony from two sides, patrolled the balcony itself, surrounded a bronze drinking fountain. Randolph called over a woman standing in a group of officers.

Mrs. Candlemass, the assistant manager, was a tall woman of about fifty, in a black sheaf dress with pearls and silver hair cut modishly. She wore makeup and pearl buttons in her ears. I figured she lived in the suburbs.

“The place was built thirty years before safety stock,” she explained. “Before that, film was a combination of celluloid and silver nitrate; extremely volatile.”

“Yeah,” Karyl said. “I can't believe I never heard of silver nitrate before today. What about it?”

“That's just it. There were fires, fatalities until someone got the bright idea of enclosing the projection room in solid concrete.”

“It's a bunker,” Randolph said. “No outside windows.”

“How'd the projectionist get out?”

“Through the door, if he moved quickly. They didn't always,” the assistant manager added.

“Would the room contain a blast?”

“I suppose that would depend on the material. I don't know much about explosives.”

He told her what was in Marcus' vest. The rouge on her cheeks stood out against her sudden pallor. She shook her head.

“Thank you.” Sets of bronze doors were marked by illuminated aisle numbers. He took a step toward the closest door.

She said, “Your men will be careful, won't they? The Michigan's on the National Register of Historic Places.”

He stopped. “I'd rather answer to them than the girl's parents. What's her name?”

“Crystal.” She bit her lip.

The auditorium was only half the size of the one in the renovated Fox Theater in Detroit, but it seated more people than the average multiplex, and comfortably, in deep seats upholstered in tough, wine-colored mohair, with a chandelier ablaze, as was every light in the vaulted room, including wall sconces, the stumble-bulbs in the risers, and utility lamps for cleaning and maintenance crews. It was as bright as outdoors.

The place belonged to the days of Rudolph Valentino, Lon Chaney, Sr., and Ramon Novarro, with an apron in front of the screen deep enough to host a live show before the chariot races started onscreen, an orchestra pit, and a Wurlitzer organ wheezing accompaniment to Garbo, Gable, and all the Barrymores; it would dwarf any refugee from late-night live television, but it was just the right size for Randolph Scott, Marilyn Monroe, and the Marx brothers: faces made to fill a screen the size of a football field. Those places came with a hush, like a cathedral at Easter; only not today. Men and women in uniform prowled the aisles, leading bomb-sniffing dogs on halters and poking big black rubber flashlights between the seats.

A hard white shaft stretched from a square opening at the back of the room halfway up the wall, splashing the movie screen. I shielded my eyes with my hand, but I couldn't see anything beyond it. He'd taken the highest ground possible, and a point of vantage from where he could see everything that happened below.

Lieutenant Randolph jerked his shoulder toward one of the gilded walls, where a thin rectangle outlined the door to the stairs leading to the projection room. “They've been up there twenty minutes. We haven't heard a peep.”

Marcus might have been waiting for our entrance. A shot rang around the acoustically designed room and one of the bulbs in the chandelier burst and showered a glittering powder of glass onto the seats below.

Peep.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

We hit the deck, groping for our weapons. The carpet smelled of Jujubes. I looked at Lieutenant Karyl, lying belly-down beside me in the aisle. “Okay if I go out for popcorn?”

He said nothing; until I started crawling around back in the direction we'd come. A hand strung with steel cable clamped on my arm.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?”

His whisper was as loud as another man's bellow.

“Cover me.” I looked back over my shoulder and grinned. “I always wanted to say that.”

He had more to bring to the conversation, but a report from the projection room cut him off. The bullet took a shard of polished mahogany off the arm of a seat a few inches above our heads, exposing yellow wood.

He let go of me, raised himself on one elbow, leveled the barrel of his semiautomatic across his other wrist, and squeezed the trigger.

He'd aimed high because of the ticket clerk. The slug struck the smile off Cupid on the wing in a ceiling vault. By then I was scrambling on hands and knees toward the exit.

One of the heavy doors was held open by a hinged prop. I kicked the prop loose with my foot as I crawled through the opening. The door glided shut against the pressure of a pneumatic tube, but not before another shot aimed from up high struck a panel. Painted plaster dust pelted my back.

Okay, so it wasn't bronze. You can't trust anything in show business. Karyl or one of the other cops returned fire.

One of the armored officers on point in the lobby came my way, shouldering his assault rifle, but he must have recognized me from when I came in with Karyl, because he swung it behind his back by its shoulder strap and bent to help me to my feet. I was halfway up; I waved him off.

“How do I get up to the projection room?”

His face was an indistinct oval behind the tinted shield. “I don't know. We're still waiting on a floor plan. Anybody hit?”

“Not yet, but somebody's going to be filling out a lot of insurance forms. Where's Mrs. Candlemass? The assistant manager.”

“We sent her away. This is no place for civilians. Are you with the locals?”

“Yeah, I'm with 'em.”

“Think there's really a bomb? There almost always isn't.” He sounded young.

“This isn't one of the almosts.”

He returned to his post behind the velvet ropes.

I dusted myself off and stood in the middle of the lobby, looking around the powder room of the Taj Mahal.

Something moved behind the candy counter; a shadow. I walked up to it and leaned my hands on the glass. Someone in an usher's uniform knelt in a fetal position on the floor, hands clasped behind his neck.

I tapped the glass with the barrel of the Chief's Special.

The figure stirred, unclasped its hands, and looked up at me. It was a college-age boy, breathing so shallowly he had hiccups. His face matched his buzz cut, which he'd bleached albino-white. His eyes were blue, the pupils shrunk with fear.

“Why haven't you evacuated?” I asked.

“I kind of did.” He hiccuped. “Please don't kill me.”

“Relax. I'm with the cops. How do I get up to the projection room?”

“There's just the one set of stairs, from the auditorium. Through the hidden door.”

“What about backstage?”

He pointed to a door marked
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Thanks.” I put away the revolver. “Got any Milk Duds?”

He hesitated, took a box off the stack inside the counter, and slid it onto the top. “That'll be three-sixty.” He hiccuped.

*   *   *

The glamour of the place fell off abruptly when I went through the door. The passage, used exclusively by employees, took a backseat to the several millions the community had invested in restoring the building. Chewing the chocolates to keep my mouth from drying out, I passed between plasterboard walls, unpainted and patched, my way lit by pale fluorescents behind frosted glass panels in the ceiling. The floor was bare plywood. This part was unheated and smelled and felt damp.

Shouts reverberated through uninsulated walls. They might have belonged to the feature soundtrack, but none was playing; at least none but in Jerry Marcus' head.

“Stay where you are! I'll shoot her in the head and throw her down the stairs like a sack of potatoes! Bumpity-bumpity-bump!” It was the first time I'd heard his voice. It cracked, as if it were changing. A toad crawled down my back and curled up at the base of my spine.

“Don't do it, Jerry! This doesn't have to be any worse than it is!” Lieutenant Karyl sounded calmer when he raised his voice than when he was speaking normally.

The passage ended at a steel fire door. It was locked, in the tradition of fire doors everywhere. I slipped the latch with the narrow strip of aluminum I keep in my wallet. A theater smell puffed out when I opened the door, of dry-rot and old sweat and turpentine. Marcus' voice was louder now. I tuned out on the words; from here on they'd only get in the way.

There was more room than I expected behind the screen and the bare brick wall in back; I'd forgotten that the places were designed to provide every kind of public entertainment there was, with big band performances, dance numbers, and acrobatic acts.

Nothing so gaudy was going on at the moment, or had since Herbert Hoover. It was storage space now: a tangle of thick ropes like ship's rigging, canvas flats in stacks on the floor and leaning against the bricks, cartons filled with mildewing playbills, and an obstacle course of broken seats, piled lumber, and old stage properties left there to skin knees, bark ankles, and snag holes with exposed nailheads. I tore a hole in my suitcoat clambering over it all to get to the corner, where a steel ladder bolted to the wall led straight up into darkness beyond catwalks arranged in a grid. Loops of insulated cable hung from these.

I took off the coat and my tie, let them drop, and started climbing.

The rungs were clammy and scabbed with rust. They wouldn't be used as frequently as when live shows meant changing backdrops and a stagehand to install ropes and pulleys; but they seemed sturdy enough. I stopped to peel a cobweb from across my eyes, and again to wipe my palms on my shirt. I reached back to make sure my revolver was snug in its clip and climbed higher.

Something scampered across my knuckles, following a ledge made by old mortar squirted out between courses of brick. I didn't look to see what it was. One phobia at a time was as much as I could handle.

A shot rang bells in my ears, close enough I took it at first for an explosion; Jerry Marcus' bomb going off. But then, I wouldn't hear it, would I? More reports answered, sounding farther away; a routine exchange. The ceiling—or unexposed rafters, more likely—was invisible up there where the lights didn't reach, but I must have been nearly level with the projection booth.

I don't like heights, never have; but I hung by one hand in order to turn my body to gauge just how far I was from Marcus' shooting stand.

Not so bad.

Just the entire length of the auditorium from front to back. I turned back toward the ladder and hauled myself up another rung.

The catwalks hung from ropes, all of which looked as new as the forty-hour work week. I made a long leg onto the one nearest the ladder, groping for one of the ropes supporting it. It swayed, creaking like an old schooner in rough seas. I held onto the rope with both hands until it stopped. I worked my way along the old boards, grasping the next rope before letting go of the last, feeling for spongy spots in the wood. A drop of sweat rolled off the end of my nose and shot fifteen feet down to the stage. It hit the boards with a plop that sounded as loud to me as any gun report. They knew how to build in acoustics then. The bastards.

I waited; but then Jerry Marcus started shouting again. He was getting louder by the yard; louder, I thought, than it should have been, coming from inside a room sealed in solid concrete. I took hope; but it might have been wishful thinking.

The catwalk took a turn at the end, butting onto another that ran parallel to the back of the auditorium where the projection room was. It was dark in the corner. I reached for a rope, missed it, gasped—and smacked my palm against brick. I was closer to the wall than I thought. From then on I groped my way along the wall.

My hand came up against something that stuck out from the brick. I wrapped my palm around it; the blunt end of something that turned out to be slim and cylindrical as I felt along it. When my hand touched cold steel I grasped the handle in both hands and lifted. Something came clear of the hooks or whatever had been holding it in place. I took down the fire axe and resumed progress, holding it horizontally across my waist. It made a dandy balancing rod.

More shots. I stopped until they did. I wondered how many reloads Marcus had with him. Plenty, probably. He seemed to have seen to everything else. Another lull, and then I crept on.

Something snapped with a bang I thought at first was another shot; but the catwalk took a sudden, stomach-lurching tilt. A rope had given way.

But the boards held. I rearranged my grip on the axe, sliding one hand up to the base of the blade and releasing the other to steady myself against the wall.

The surface changed abruptly: coarser, the spaces between the mortar more spread out. I had run out of brick and was supporting myself against the concrete blocks that enclosed the projection room. I stretched my arm farther along, testing the surface with my palm. It was unbroken. If I got to work with the axe right away, I might break through before Christmas.