Part 20 (1/2)
CHAPTER 40.
Thursday, December 7, 1978 ”Ramone, what the h.e.l.l we doin' up here? The floor's empty.”
A light snapped on in the hall. It leaked around the doorframe into the abandoned office where Beatrice slept. She sat up with a jolt. She had just settled into her makes.h.i.+ft bed for the night. Footsteps grew louder as they neared the door. It was locked, but the approaching security guards had keys. She could hear them jingling.
”Elevators have been acting real funny lately,” a deep voice replied.
It sounded closer than the first. Cigarette smoke seeped under the door. Beatrice scrambled back from her bed away from the voices and into the dark bathroom. She could still hear them talking as she eased the door shut.
”What do you mean, 'funny'?”
”What do you think I mean? Cars been comin' up here the past few days all hours of the night.”
”So? They probably just busted. Come on, man. Everything in this dump acts funny. Wasn't you just sayin' yesterday that those security cameras are constantly on the fritz? Let's get back to the poker game.”
”What does my s.h.i.+rt say? Does it say 'Card Dealer'?” the rusty voice growled. ”No, it don't. It says 'Security.' I'm here to do a job.”
”You goin' for employee of the month or somethin'? n.o.body's here, Ramone.”
The footsteps grew fainter. Beatrice heard several doors open and close on the other side of the office. She didn't start breathing again until she heard the elevator bell ring and the voices disappear.
Beatrice clicked on the bathroom light and splashed cold water on her face. She gripped the sink with white knuckles. They had noticed her using the elevators. She would have to be more careful. Scanning the bathroom in the light, she realized there would have been no hiding place to keep her from being discovered, especially not if the guards had found her things on the floor in the other room. As she turned out the light, she glanced at the large grate for the vent next to the toilet, then s.h.i.+vered as the room went dark.
From that moment on, the journey from the ladies' room on the ninth floor up the emergency stairs to her bed was a heart-stopping ordeal. At every turn she was certain Ramone or his friend would jump out at her from a dark corner. She didn't dare set foot outside her secret bedroom at night.
To make matters worse, she hadn't had any luck tracking down a Jim or Ted in the office. Their voices continued to haunt her after their midnight conference outside her door, but she hadn't heard them outside her own head since. Tony still needed her to find out their names somehow. Time was running out until their next meeting.
”The minute things get too scary, I want you out of there.” She repeated the detective's words every time she thought she heard footsteps behind her in the dark. It was a nice idea, but there was nowhere else to go. She'd filled out the forms for the apartment down the street, but she couldn't submit them. She didn't have the proper doc.u.mentation. Besides, Tony needed her help finding Max and reopening his investigation into the bank. She would have to find a way, scary or not.
Early Sat.u.r.day morning the building felt still. Beatrice gazed down at Euclid Avenue through the dusty blinds. The road was deserted. The sun bounced brightly off of the high-rise windows across the street, making the abandoned room feel even gloomier. She hadn't seen the sun in days. Even during her lunch hours it was buried behind thick winter clouds.
She should have left the night before but couldn't face another weekend wandering the hospital halls. The name R. T. Halloran, written on the ICU register, still loomed in her mind.
One hundred feet below her, a man in a dark coat and hat crossed Euclid and walked to the front doors of the bank. She frowned as she watched him. Several minutes later the elevators whirred to life out in the hallway. The building wasn't empty, not even on a Sat.u.r.day.
The sky went dark before she finally worked up the nerve to creep down to the third-floor personnel office to look for files on Ted and Jim. The emergency stair tower was lit by weak flood lamps that hovered over the doors to each floor. An endless swirl of railings and steps led from the eleventh floor to the third. She stared down the dark chasm and almost turned back. The thought of Max stopped her. Max was missing, and Ted and Jim might know why. She grabbed the rail and began climbing down the steps in her stocking feet.
When she finally reached a beige door marked ”3,” she pressed her ear to the cold metal and listened for voices. After several minutes, she was satisfied that the hall was empty and gently pulled the door open. The squeak of the hinges was painful. She squeezed through and silently eased it closed.
Beatrice crouched and waited in a dark corner for several heartbeats just to be sure before inching her way down the hall. The personnel office was across the elevator lobby on the other side of the floor. She hadn't been there since her first day on the job but could still picture it. She kept her back to the wall all the way to the HR department. The door was locked.
Max's heavy key ring was in her pocket. Beatrice searched the keys, trying one after another, until she found a match. The door swung open. She slipped inside the office and clicked the door softly shut behind her. Three steps into the dark room, she banged her stocking foot against a trash can with a dull clank. Sparks of pain flew from her toes and she whispered, ”Aaaaah! Ouch! Ow! Ow!”
As she hobbled past the chairs and coffee table to the reception desk, it dawned on her that she had no real direction. She was in the personnel office investigating two strangers-Teddy and Jim. Her stomach sank. She hadn't planned the burglary very well. It wasn't as though a personnel chart would be just lying on the receptionist's desk. She was too scared to even turn on the light.
The faint sound of footsteps came tapping down the hall. Beatrice froze. They grew louder, until she could make out voices.
”Bill, stop it! You're terrible!” a woman giggled.
Beatrice backed away from the sound. Her eyes flew around the dark office, searching for a place to hide.
”Not out here, someone might see,” the woman said, short of breath.
A key slid into the lock Beatrice had just opened, and she could see a large shadow through the frosted gla.s.s. She ran to the nearest open door and closed it behind her just as the door to the personnel office was flung open.
More footsteps, a trash can being kicked, a door slamming, and the rumble of a desk being b.u.mped into drowned out Beatrice's shallow breathing in the next room. m.u.f.fled voices muddled together just outside her hiding place. She strained to hear them, until the sound of wet kisses and heavy breathing sent Beatrice reeling back to the farthest corner she could find.
Five steps backward, she b.u.mped against something hard and metal. It was a filing cabinet. Her hands blindly traced its edges until she found another and another. She was in a filing room. She tried to keep her mind off of the grunting and squeaking metal on the other side of the door by counting the file cabinets. There were ten.
She decided to risk opening one in the dark. It slid open with a faint click, and she ran her hands over the files. The drawer was packed full with papers. Beatrice itched to turn on the lights and read them, but the light would leak out from the seams of the door, and she'd be caught.
Beatrice let out a small sigh as the grunting and groaning in the next room continued. The pitch black of the filing room became suffocating as the man's grunting got louder and louder, until it sounded as though he might be in the room with her, panting in the dark. She shrank into a ball with her head buried in her knees and her hands over her ears. Finally, she heard him cry out and it stopped.
”Bill! You're an animal!” the woman gasped.
The man chuckled under his sweaty breath. Beatrice heard a faint smack. ”I don't know what I'd do without you, Susie . . .”
”Oh, honey.” The sound of sloppy kisses filled the air again. ”And I can't believe this ring! You didn't have to get me anything!”
”I thought of you when I saw it. The sapphires match your eyes.”
Beatrice heard the woman's voice coo faintly.
”Just don't show it to anybody, okay? It's got to be our little secret.”
”Oh, I'm so tired of all of the secrets!” she grumbled.
”You think I'm not? I want to shout my love from the rooftops. I hate all this sneaking around.”
They were the same words from her aunt's love letter. It was Aunt Doris's Bill talking. Beatrice strained to hear his voice. It sounded like her boss, Bill Thompson, but she didn't dare open the door to confirm it.
”I love you too.” She sighed. ”Well, it's absolutely beautiful! Is it real?”
”What do I look like, some kind of cheapskate? Of course it's real.” There was a pause, and Bill cleared his throat. ”Say, did you get that paperwork I sent down Friday?”
”Hmm? Oh, yeah. I think it's here somewhere.” The sound of drawers being opened and shut filled the now-awkward silence. ”I hate meeting here, you know. Why can't we ever go someplace nice? My desk is as hard as rock.”