The Whenabouts of Burr (5 page)

CHAPTER SIX

Swift followed Alex: as easily as a trailer follows a truck. The man strode down the street as disdainful of cars or pedestrians as though he had written assurance of a place in the hereafter. He never glanced to the right or left, and if the world behind him had been dismantled and crated as soon as he passed he would not have known it. Nate could have dressed in a clown suit and rode on the neck of an elephant three paces behind, and Alex: would still have marched on obliviously. Which was a good thing: in Nate's present state of exhaustion, the subtler methods of tailing would have been beyond him. But he was able to stagger on, maintaining a more-or-less steady ten meters behind his subject.

Alex: went into a branch library. Nate checked for other possible exits and, finding none, settled down happily on a bus stop bench to await Alex's return. The only problem was that as soon as Nate sat down, he felt himself drifting into the euphoric pre-sleep state where the eyes close of their own volition and fantasy and reality erase their common border. Nate stood up to stamp his feet and stop from going to sleep, but just then Alex: Hamilton came out of the library.

He had changed clothes while inside, and was now wearing a brown frock coat with wide lapels and matching vest, a white silk cravat, brown knee breeches with white stockings, and leather slip-ons with great brass buckles. He carried a cocked hat under his arm and wore a white periwig on his head. He walked by muttering, “I'm late, I'm late, the General will have my head.” Nate tried to follow him, but found that he couldn't move, seeming to be frozen in one spot. He tried to move, he willed himself to move, he strained to move, then his head fell forward onto his knee and he woke up.

This time he did jump to his feet and stamp around. He pinched himself in the lobe of the ear to make sure that he was really awake, and hoped that Alex: had not left the library in the minute or so that he had dozed.

Luck was with him, and two minutes later Alex: emerged, trotted down the front steps, and strode down the street. Swift took up the pursuit.

A few ground-eating minutes later Alex: arrived at the VENUS-ADONIS Turkish Bath and entered. “Who would have believed?” Nate thought, as he settled down outside to wait. The problem was finding a comfortable position that wouldn't put him to sleep. After a few minutes of fidgeting, he decided that any position would put him to sleep; the only hope was to keep in motion. He walked back and forth in front of the VENUS-ADONIS's front door, trying not to look like a shy fan or a process server. He shifted to the bank across the street, walking back and forth in front of its massive doors until he noticed a man with a formal mustache, thin, humorless lips, and a nervous, jumpy gaze peering at him suspiciously through the open blinds in the bank's front window. Then he moved back to the VENUS-ADONIS.

All of a sudden, a clock of realization parted the surrounding fog of tiredness and woke him up completely. Swift remembered that he hadn't performed the first and most basic check; the kindergarten lesson of the plain-clothesmen and spies. He had not looked for other exits.

He stuck an empty pop bottle before the front door, walked around the corner quickly, and located the alley that ran to the back of VENUS-ADONIS. There was a loading platform that clearly hadn't been used in many years, with a large roll-up door which was padlocked on the outside. The small door to the side of the platform opened from the inside, but there were two garbage cans in front of it. From the position of the detritus surrounding the cans it was clear that no one had moved them recently.

Thus reassured, Nate ran back around the corner to catch Alex: if he should have started to leave while Nate was inspecting the garbage. There was no sign of him, and the pop bottle was still in place; meaning he was either still inside, or subtle beyond all expectation.

By now Swift was beginning to worry. Unless Alex: was indulging in some of the more exotic pleasures, or had fallen asleep in the steam bath, he should have reappeared by now; it had been over an hour. Some people spent the better part of a day in that sort of establishment, but Alex: was too busy and too purposeful to be sidetracked for long by material indulgence.

Nate pushed through the swinging doors and entered the white-tiled lobby. He approached the white-coated attendant behind the white-tiled counter in one corner. “Morning,” he said.

“Sci-fi buffs,” the man muttered, scratching his nose with the tip of his pencil.

“How's that?” Swift asked.

The man looked up. “Oh, I didn't see you. I was just looking for a three-letter word meaning ‘sci-fi buffs'.”

“Good luck,” Nate said. “The man who came in here about an hour ago; do you know where he went? Very neatly dressed...”

“The cat with the homburg?” The attendant pointed his pencil. “Down the corridor and to the left. Steam room. You a friend of his?”

“I know him,” Nate said cautiously, “why?”

“He went into the steam room, you know?”

“You told me,” Nate said.

“Yeah. Well, he went into the steam room. I told him he'd have to wait a minute while I got the steam turned on, ‘cause he was the first customer of the day. He said he didn't want the steam turned on. I asked him if he wanted to use the locker room and hang his clothes up, and he said no to that too; which, I suppose figures if he didn't want the steam turned on. You know? He's been in there ever since, fully dressed, with no steam.”

“He didn't come out?” Swift asked.

“He didn't come past me,” the attendant told him, “and there's no rear door to the steam room. He could have got into the locker room, but that opens out onto this corridor also, you know?”

“I wonder what he's doing in there,” Swift mused. The attendant shrugged. If it wasn't a seven-letter word meaning “dealing with in an aggressive, unjust, or spiteful manner”, he wasn't interested. He went back to his puzzle. “He's been an awfully long time,” Swift said.

“Feel free to go back and make sure he's all right,” the attendant said.

“I wouldn't want him to think I was being nosy,” Nate said.

“Peek in,” the attendant suggested. “There's a glass panel in the door. When the steam's on you can't see anything, but since your buddy didn't want the steam on…”

Nate walked back to the steam room door and peered through the glass. At first he couldn't see anything in the all-white room; it was like being snow blind. Then details emerged: the whitewashed wooden bench, the pattern of tiles on the wall, the drains, the pipes, the door to the locker room, and the fact that there wasn't a soul inside.

He pushed the door open and went in. There was no place to hide in the large, square room but under the benches, and no one was doing that. He walked through into the locker room. There were four rows of lockers, all of them unlocked and most of them open. There were two wide shelves stacked with bath towels. There was no Alex: but Swift opened the closed lockers, feeling that he should go through the motions. He knew Alex: Hamilton wasn't hiding in one of them. He was right.

Swift didn't panic. He was too experienced, too intelligent, too rational, too blasé, too tired to panic. He walked with measured tread back to the counter. “He's gone,” he announced.

The attendant looked up from his puzzle. “Huh?”

“He's gone. The gentleman with the homburg.”

“That's silly,” the attendant said, looking annoyed. “He hasn't come out. He must be in the locker room.”

“I looked. He's not.”

‘The massage rooms? They're across the corridor. But they're supposed to be locked. The masseuses aren't in yet.” He took a key ring from a drawer in the counter and deserted his puzzle to try the three doors. They were all locked. He opened them. There was no one inside. “Funny,” he said. He went back to his puzzle.

“Ves,” Nate called into the button in his lapel, “Can you get over here right away?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ves examined the building, then he examined the attendant, then he examined Nate. “One of the three of you,” he concluded, “is mistaken—or lying.”

“The building?” Swift asked. “Isn't that an extreme form of personification, to say that a building is either mistaken or lying?”

“Only in so far as it expresses the wishes of its builder or owner,” Ves explained, settling down on one of the metal benches in the lobby and glaring at the white walls. “For instance, it could be mistakenly leading us to the conclusion that there is no other exit to the steam room; innocently concealing another behind a crate, or masking it as an air duct. Or, it could be lying to us and have a concealed door.”

“A secret panel?” Swift asked. “I thought that was only a fictional device. Are there any real secret panels?”

“Of course,” Ves said. “There are hidden doors of all descriptions and for all purposes. There are the priest-holes in England, which were used, I believe, during the time of Cromwell. There are hidden rooms in pioneer houses, so the family could disappear in case of an overwhelming Indian attack. There are the rooms used during the time of the Underground Railroad. There are hidden doors in some executive suites today, which conceal a bathroom, a bedroom, or merely a bar.”

“No secret panels in here,” the attendant said, displaying an interest in what was happening for the first time. “I checked for that.”

Ves turned to him. “You did what?” he asked. “Why should you do anything like that?”

“'Cause of the other two,” the attendant explained. “I mean, it seemed like the reasonable explanation at the time.”

Nate stared at him. “The other two?” He was almost afraid to find out what the attendant meant.

“Right,” the attendant said. “Two other gentlemen have come through here and never come out. That's just while I'm on duty. First one came after I'd been here about a month; that would be about two years ago. This guy dressed like an Italian comes barging in here and rushes through into the steam room. I run after him to give him a ticket and time-stamp him in, and when I come into the room he's gone. And I'm no more than maybe two-three seconds behind.”

“Gone?” Nate asked.

“What do you mean, ‘like an Italian?' ” Ves demanded.

“Was the room empty?” Nate asked.

“Like a—you know—Roman. Like he'd just come off a movie set. With the funny-looking armor and the kilt and the leggings: like that. There was another guy in the room, laying down with a towel over his face. He says he heard the door open and felt the draft, but didn't see anyone, because he had a towel on his face.”

“A Roman?” Ves repeated.

“I called the police,” the attendant said. “But that was sure a mistake. Two guys came out to question me. One of them decided I must have made the whole thing up and there was no guy; the other one thinks maybe I killed the guy and got rid of the body. They made me look through a couple thousand pictures and tell me they'll keep in touch. That's the last I hear. So the next time, I don't call no one.”

“The next time…” Swift said.

“Yeah. ‘I shall make use of your facility,' he says, flipping me this gold coin and trotting into the steam room. I thought he meant something dirty, talking like that. I was about to go after him and tell him we didn't do that kind of thing, but I was distracted by the coin. It was a Stella, and I'd never seen one. Run across the word in puzzles all the time.”

“Stella?” Swift asked.

“A four-dollar gold piece. There were less than five hundred of them minted. That's what the guy I sold it to said. There's a large star on the back and the word
Stella
, that's Latin for star.”

“Whose picture is on the front?” Ves asked.

“Liberty. With her hair down. Kind of a chubby-looking face.”

“What happened to the gentleman who gave you the coin?” Ves asked.

“Have no idea. He never came out of the steam room. That's when I started searching for hidden panels, but I did a careful cross-check of the room sizes, and there'd be nowhere for a panel to go.”

“So no panels,” Nate said.

The attendant shrugged. “Maybe a panel,” he said, “but it don't go anywhere.”

“So where did those three men disappear to?” Nate demanded, getting slightly annoyed with the attendant's matter-of-fact attitude.

The attendant put his lips together and pushed them in and out for a minute. “I thought a lot about that,” he said. “Did you ever hear of the fourth dimension?”

Ves shook his head. “This approaches the sublime,” he said. “It has certainly passed the ridiculous. If I assume the good faith of both of you, if not the good sense, I must conclude that the secret of the disappearance—of the three disappearances—is a secret of the building.” He waggled a finger at the attendant. “Do you know how old it is?” he asked. “When it was built—and by whom?”

“Long time ago,” the attendant said. “Guy named Pronzini worked here when I started. Retired last year, after forty years. Can you feature that—forty years. Started a chicken farm. He told me before the war this used to be a fancy place. I guess that would be World War Two.”

“This place dates back to the twenties at least,” Ves said. “Maybe a couple of decades older than that. They haven't built these palaces of pleasure for some time.”

“Yeah,” the attendant said. “That's what I thought.”

“Well, we'll just look around,” Ves said. “You can never tell what they thought it was essential to build into a place like this, back in those far off days.”

“I looked,” the attendant said.

“I'm sure you did,” Swift told him.

“But it's our job,” Ves said. “You wouldn't want to stop us from doing our job, would you? You understand.”

“Oh,” the attendant said. “Of course.” He went back behind the counter and picked up his puzzle. “Go ahead, do what you like. I hope you find something. It would sure be nice to be able to prove I'm not crazy.” Pencil poised, he looked up at them. “I'm not, you know.”

“I know,” Nate said. “I saw him this time, remember.”

“That's right,” the attendant said happily, settling down to his puzzle. “Search away, gentlemen.”

Ves led Nate into the steam room. “Tap the wall,” he said.

“What for?” Nate asked.

“Didn't they teach you anything in Coast Guard Intelligence School besides
port
and
starboard
?”

“There is no Coast Guard Intelligence School,” Nate told him. “There was one once, but it got misplaced. I was sent to Army Intelligence School at Fort Geronimo, Kansas.”

“Having been associated with this government for some time in my youth,” Ves said, “I am, somehow, not surprised.”

“Went there for a year,” Nate told him. “Picked up a lot of useful skills. Tank recognition—they were big on tank recognition. Order of battle, uniforms of foreign officers, chain of command, marching, crawling over barbed wire, saluting, and playing poker; those were the major skills they stressed.”

“What about raping and looting?” Ves asked.

“It wasn't in my curriculum,” Nate said. “Only career Army officers took it. It was a seminar, I believe. Why am I tapping the walls?”

“Listen,” Ves told him. “If there's a hollow space, or anything else funny behind the wall, it will sound different. Here, watch!” He went around the wall with his ear pressed against it, tapping it every few inches. It gave a solid
thunk
.

The solid
thunk
continued everywhere either of them tapped, all around the wall, high and low. Ves finally stopped and glared accusingly at the ceiling. “Let's try the locker room,” he said.

Nate worked his way around the locker room walls, while Ves tried inside the lockers, over the lockers, and under them. “Incredible!” Ves said finally, sitting down on the wooden bench. “He came in here, he came not out of here, but he is here not. And my grammar isn't nearly as mixed up as my mind right now. There must be a way. And if there is, I can find it; I know I can!”

“I believe you,” Swift said. “Where do we look now?”

“Let's just stand back and examine these rooms,” Ves said. “Not search them, but look at them: see what they look like. See if they differ in any way from what they should look like. See if there is anything unusual or different about the rooms, no matter how subtle. Sherlock Holmes once solved a difficult case by noting how deep the parsley had sunk into the butter.”

“Right,” Nate said, “different it is.”

“Don't humor me,” Ves said. “If you have a better idea, let's have it.”

“That's the difference between you and Sherlock Holmes,” Nate said. “He wouldn't ever have acknowledged that there might be a better idea.” They both went back into the steam room and stood in the middle, staring at the four bare walls.

“Bare walls,” Nate said.

“Except for the steam pipes and valve,” Ves amended, “and that design carved into the tile.”

“Strange little device,” Nate said, going over to the waist-high pattern and examining it. “It looks like the decorative friezework they did in the New York subway stations during the depression. A little WPA in the steam room, do you think?”

The design was a simple one: a circle pieced out in green tile with a T inscribed in it in gold. “Probably the initial of the original owner,” Ves said.

“You said anything different,” Nate said.

“I know, I know,” Ves came over and peered at the device, “but I didn't mean… say, you know the grout between the tiles looks different here—and here. Well, how do you like that?”

“What?” Swift demanded.

“Look here; all around here, where the green circle meets the outside tiles. The grout is a different shade of white from anywhere else. It's darker, grayer.”

“You're right!” Swift said. “Now why would that be?” He pulled a penknife out of his pocket and began attempting to pry around the outside of the green circle. “Too tight,” he said. “Won't go in—wait a minute—push here— ahh!—just a little—nope—but—ahh!—There, it… shit!”

“What happened?” Ves asked. “Get it in?”

“Broke the blade,” Swift told him. “Still, it shows that something does fit in there.”

“Well, then there should be a way to open it,” Ves said. He pushed and prodded, twisted and turned, tried different combinations of the above, and was suddenly rewarded: the wall opened at the green circle, revealing a hole the size and shape of a wall safe.

“What did you do?” Nate asked.

“I'm not sure,” Ves told him, “but it worked.”

Inside the opening was a Bakelite panel with three vernier dials with large handles set in a triangle, a glass-covered pointer dial in the middle, and a red light bulb, unlit, above the pointer. Below the triangle was a brass plate:

FRANKLYN & WHITNEY MODEL IV I. T.

All warranties, express & implied, are void if machine is tampered with. Contact our recent representative.

41-5734 e

FOR PRIME TIME DO NOT REDIAL

And below the brass plate was one black button.

“What the hell?” Nate wondered aloud.

“The steam?” Ves asked, then answered: “No. The steam valves are over there, and this looks vaguely electrical.”

“Prime time,” Nate said. “That's what Alex: was talking about, remember?”

“What do you suppose happens when you push that button?” Ves asked.

“I have no idea,” Nate said. “You think it's the way Alex: got out of here?”

“Can you think of anything else?”

“No. Shall we push it?”

“Well,” Ves considered. “Would you rather face the unknown, or the President?”

“I'll push it. Should we mess with the controls?”

“Just push the button.”

Nate reached forward and pushed. It went firmly all the way in, then clicked.

The red light went on.