Part 2 (2/2)

Tom glanced around briefly, then began to hammer on the door again, this time hard enough to rattle the gla.s.s in its old wooden frame and make his reflection s.h.i.+ver. 'Last chance, then we're coming in!' 'Last chance, then we're coming in!'

Clay turned and opened his mouth to tell him that masterful s.h.i.+t wasn't going to cut it, not today, and then a bald head rose slowly from behind the reception desk. It was like watching a periscope surface. Clay recognized that head even before it got to the face; it belonged to the clerk who'd checked him in yesterday and stamped a validation on his parking-lot ticket for the lot a block over, the same clerk who'd given him directions to the Copley Square Hotel this morning.

For a moment he still lingered behind the desk, and Clay held up his room key with the green plastic Atlantic Avenue Inn fob hanging down. Then he also held up his portfolio, thinking the desk clerk might recognize it.

Maybe he did. More likely he just decided he had no choice. In either case, he used the pa.s.s-through at the end of the desk and crossed quickly to the door, detouring around the body. Clay Riddell believed he might be witnessing the first reluctant scurry he had ever seen in his life. When the desk clerk reached the other side of the door, he looked from Clay to Tom and then back to Clay again. Although he did not appear particularly rea.s.sured by what he saw, he produced a ring of keys from one pocket, flicked rapidly through them, found one, and used it on his side of the door. When Tom reached for the handle, the bald clerk held his hand up much as Clay had held his up to the bloodstained girl behind them. The clerk found a second key, used this one in another lock, and opened the door.

'Come in,' he said. 'Hurry.' Then he saw the girl, lingering at a little distance and watching. 'Not 'Not her.' her.'

'Yes, her,' Clay said. 'Come on, honey.' But she wouldn't, and when Clay took a step toward her, she whirled and took off running, the skirt of her dress flying out behind her.

8.

'She could die out there,' Clay said.

'Not my problem,' the desk clerk said. 'Are you coming in or not, Mr. Riddle?' He had a Boston accent, not the blue-collar-Southie kind Clay was most familiar with from Maine, where it seemed that every third person you met was a Ma.s.sachusetts expat, but the fussy I-wish-I-were-British one.

'It's Riddell.' He was coming in all right, no way this guy was going to keep him out now that the door was open, but he lingered a moment longer on the sidewalk, looking after the girl.

'Go on,' Tom said quietly. 'Nothing to be done.'

And he was right. Nothing to be done. That was the exact h.e.l.l of it. He followed Tom in, and the desk clerk once more double-locked the doors of the Atlantic Avenue Inn behind them, as if that were all it would take to keep them from the chaos of the streets.

9.

'That was Franklin,' said the desk clerk as he led the way around the uniformed man lying facedown on the floor.

He looks too old to be a bellhop, Tom had said, peering in through the window, and Clay thought he certainly did. He was a small man, with a lot of luxuriant white hair. Unfortunately for him, the head on which it was probably still growing (hair and nails were slow in getting the word, or so he had read somewhere) was c.o.c.ked at a terrible crooked angle, like the head of a hanged man. 'He'd been with the Inn for thirty-five years, as I'm sure he told every guest he ever checked in. Most of them twice.' Tom had said, peering in through the window, and Clay thought he certainly did. He was a small man, with a lot of luxuriant white hair. Unfortunately for him, the head on which it was probably still growing (hair and nails were slow in getting the word, or so he had read somewhere) was c.o.c.ked at a terrible crooked angle, like the head of a hanged man. 'He'd been with the Inn for thirty-five years, as I'm sure he told every guest he ever checked in. Most of them twice.'

That tight little accent grated on Clay's frayed nerves. He thought that if it had been a fart, it would have been the kind that comes out sounding like a party-horn blown by a kid with asthma.

'A man came out of the elevator,' the desk clerk said, once more using the pa.s.s-through to get behind the desk. Back there was apparently where he felt at home. The overhead light struck his face and Clay saw he was very pale. 'One of the crazy ones. Franklin had the bad luck to be standing right there in front of the doors-'

'I don't suppose it crossed your mind to at least take the d.a.m.n picture off his a.s.s,' Clay said. He bent down, picked up the Currier & Ives print, and put it on the couch. At the same time, he brushed the dead bellman's foot off the cus.h.i.+on where it had come to rest. It fell with a sound Clay knew very well. He had rendered it in a great many comic books as CLUMP CLUMP.

'The man from the elevator only hit him with one punch,' the desk clerk said. 'It knocked poor Franklin all the way against the wall. I think it broke his neck. In any case, that was what dislodged the picture, Franklin striking the wall.'

In the desk clerk's mind, this seemed to justify everything.

'What about the man who hit him?' Tom asked. 'The crazy guy? Where'd he go?'

'Out,' the desk clerk said. 'That was when I felt locking the door to be by far the wisest course. After he went out.' He looked at them with a combination of fear and prurient, gossipy greed that Clay found singularly distasteful. 'What's happening happening out there? How bad has it gotten?' out there? How bad has it gotten?'

'I think you must have a pretty good idea,' Clay said. 'Isn't that why you locked the door?'

'Yes, but-'

'What are they saying on TV?' Tom asked.

'Nothing. The cable's been out-' He glanced at his watch. 'For almost half an hour now.'

'What about the radio?'

The desk clerk gave Tom a prissy you-must-be-joking you-must-be-joking look. Clay was starting to think this guy could write a book- look. Clay was starting to think this guy could write a book-How to Be Disliked on Short Notice. 'Radio in 'Radio in this this place? In place? In any any downtown hotel? You must be joking.' downtown hotel? You must be joking.'

From outside came a high-pitched wail of fear. The girl in the bloodstained white dress appeared at the door again and began pounding on it with the flat of her hand, looking over her shoulder as she did so. Clay started for her, fast.

'No, he locked it again, remember?' Tom shouted at him.

Clay hadn't. He turned to the desk clerk. 'Unlock it.'

'No,' the desk clerk said, and crossed both arms firmly over his narrow chest to show how firmly he meant to oppose this course of action. Outside, the girl in the white dress looked over her shoulder again and pounded harder. Her blood-streaked face was tight with terror.

Clay pulled the butcher knife out of his belt. He had almost forgotten it and was sort of astonished at how quickly, how naturally, it returned to mind. 'Open it, you sonofab.i.t.c.h,' he told the desk clerk, 'or I'll cut your throat.'

10.

'No time!' Tom yelled, and grabbed one of the high-backed, bogus Queen Anne chairs that flanked the lobby sofa. He ran it at the double doors with the legs up.

The girl saw him coming and cringed away, raising both of her hands to protect her face. At the same instant the man who had been chasing her appeared in front of the door. He was an enormous construction-worker type with a slab of a gut pus.h.i.+ng out the front of his yellow T-s.h.i.+rt and a greasy salt-and-pepper ponytail bouncing up and down on the back of it.

The chair-legs. .h.i.t the panes of gla.s.s in the double doors, the two legs on the left shattering through ATLANTIC AVENUE INN ATLANTIC AVENUE INN and the two on the right through and the two on the right through BOSTON'S FINEST ADDRESS. BOSTON'S FINEST ADDRESS. The ones on the right punched into the construction-worker type's meaty, yellow-clad left shoulder just as he grabbed the girl by the neck. The underside of the chair's seat fetched up against the solid seam where the two doors met and Tom McCourt went staggering backward, dazed. The ones on the right punched into the construction-worker type's meaty, yellow-clad left shoulder just as he grabbed the girl by the neck. The underside of the chair's seat fetched up against the solid seam where the two doors met and Tom McCourt went staggering backward, dazed.

The construction-worker guy was roaring out that speaking-in-tongues gibberish, and blood had begun to course down the freckled meat of his left biceps. The girl managed to pull free of him, but her feet tangled together and she went down in a heap, half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter, crying out in pain and fear.

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