IN ROOM 33 (7 page)

He pried her fingers from his forearm. "Leave it alone, Sinnie. You know, and I know, there's no going back. My father's dead and this hotel was part of his estate. It belongs to Lana Cole now. What she does with it—and when she does it—is her business. My guess is she'll sell the place with the speed of light."

"And won't that be grand!" She glared at him.
"We
all sit here waiting for our eviction notices, while a shifty-eyed developer makes plans to tear the Phil down and build God knows what."

"You don't know that." Wade figured Sinnie was right, but even so, he didn't intend to set eyes on Lana Cole again. For any reason. Ever. The woman was every man's wet dream, gift wrapped—with the killer force of a radiation leak. Lana Cole had come into his father's life, absorbed him, and destroyed his family with one feline swoop of her eyelashes. Even in the years since, telling himself over and over again how it took two to break up a marriage—that his father was as much at fault as Lana—he still harbored a near-pathological hatred for the woman.

He loosened the buckle on his carpenter belt a notch. "I'm going." He strode to the door.

Sinnie called after him, her voice less strident now. "What's happening here, Wade Emerson—it isn't right. This place should be yours. Your grandpa would've wanted it that way."

Wade's hand was on the doorknob and he kept his face to the door when he said, "Forget my grandfather. Forget about this place being mine. And especially forget about me having anything to do with Lana. And giving her a pile of money for my own family's hotel—assuming I had it to give. It isn't going to happen. You, me, and all the rest of the hotel's exalted clientele will be living in Dumpsters before I go within a thousand miles of that woman."

Sinnie wasn't deterred. "But what if someone else does, Wade? What if someone gets to her before you and grabs the Phil out from under your slow-moving behind?"

"Then good luck to them. If they have to be in the same room as that woman to get it, I feel damn sorry for them." He walked out.

* * *

"Mr. Rupert, are you there? I've brought Melly back."

"Mind, boy. I'm coming." Christian Rupert touched a button on the side of his recliner, and the chair seat lifted enough for him to reach his cane and pull himself to a standing position. At eighty-nine, his head worked fine, but the body under it was a crumbling mass of brittle bones and spent muscles, the lot of it weighing barely a hundred pounds. Some days he thought maybe he wouldn't bother dying, just hang around long enough to disappear.

"Mr. Rupert," the boy called again. He heard Melly whine, let out a couple of short barks.

"Almost there," he said, and picked up his struggling pace. At the door he stopped and flipped up the cover of his peephole. "Anyone with you, boy?"

"No, sir."

He asked the same question every time. The boy knew he had to come alone, but considering he wasn't right in the head, Christian had to be careful. "All right, then." He turned the bolt and opened the door a crack. The instant he did, cold tines of fear stabbed at his shrunken lungs. When he opened the door wider, the panic grew. It always did. "Quickly, quickly, boy. Get in!"

Melly skittered in, and Gordy turned his big body sideways to force himself through the narrow passage created by the partly open door. Christian closed it behind them, relaxed somewhat to hear the bolt hit home, its solid click like a distant rifle shot in the large room. He breathed as deeply as he could to calm himself.

"You okay?" The boy looked at him curiously, his tone anxious.

Without being aware of it, Christian had closed his eyes while he took his air. Ancient and shriveled as he was, he probably looked like a cadaver—frightened the boy. "I'm fine, Gordy. Will you help me back to my chair?"

"Sure."

Gordy took his broomstick of an arm and walked him to his recliner. He leaned back into it and pushed the button. Down he went. "Melly, my girl, did you have a good walk?" Melly answered with a swirling tail, jumped onto the footstool sitting beside Christian's chair, and put her paws on his armrest. Christian couldn't take the weight of her on his lap, so the footstool, a hand's length away, had to do. He stroked the dog's soft head and crooned, "My pretty girl, pretty, pretty girl."

"Can I have my money, please? My mom wants me at home."

"Did you take the girl for a good, long walk?"

"I did. She likes the park." Gordy smiled at the dog. "She chased a squirrel today. Treed it, too."

Christian stroked the dog's head again. "A real adventure, eh, Melly?" He lifted his head and jerked it toward the table under the window. "My purse is there. Take three dollars out of it and bring the rest to me."

He watched the boy go to the table, click open the small leather change purse, and take out exactly three dollars. He showed the money in his hand to Christian. "This right?"

"Exactly. You're a good boy, Gordy."

Gordy grinned and handed him the purse, then watched while Christian counted what was left in a ritual they shared every afternoon.

A man had to be sure. There was always the chance the man-child pocketed extra when Christian wasn't watching. It was all there as it always was. He tightened the grip on the money in his hand, relishing the feel of it, the power of it, the preciseness of the count.

Christian set the purse aside. "Anything new going on in the hotel?" Another ritual. Daily question period.

"Nope. Same as always." He brightened. " 'Cept somebody tried to sneak in one night. Left a beer can and broke a window."

"Where was that?"

"Room 33,I think."

"Really." He snickered.
Good old Room 33.
He went on, "I heard a hammer earlier. Is something broken, Gordy?"

"Henry's door. He lost his doorknob, but he needed a hinge, too, so Wade was doing it for him."

Christian's head came up. "That would be Mr. Emerson. Am I correct?"

"Uh-huh. He fixes things good around here."

"So I've been told." What he hadn't been told was that the man was still in the hotel. How odd.

"He could fix your stuck window. I could ask him. If you want me to."

"No, that won't be necessary." Christian smiled at him. He was a nice boy, really. Rather pretty. If he were twenty, thirty years younger, he would... "What does he look like, this Wade fellow?"

Gordy frowned. "I don't know."

"Does he look like that?" Christian nodded to a sepia-toned photograph in a gleaming silver frame. It sat on a table near the French doors leading to the penthouse rooftop patio. Gordy went to the table and picked it up. Seeing it in his hands made Christian's nerves jump. He wanted to shout, put it down, put it down! But he wanted the lad to look at it even more. He'd tried to stifle it, but the longer Wade Emerson stayed in the hotel, the more his curiosity grew.

"He does. Kind of. Except not so weird." He returned the photograph to the table.

"Farther back." Christian said. "Put it nearer the window. Right where it was."

Gordy did as he was told and came back to stand in front of Christian. He didn't ask who the man in the photo was, but Christian told him anyway. "That's a very old picture. It's Wade's grandfather, Joseph Emerson. We used to be business partners. But that was a long time ago."

Gordy looked around the room, rubbed behind his ear. "Can I go now, Mr. Rupert? My Mom's waitin'."

"If there's nothing else you can think to tell me, you can go. But come back this afternoon at five. All right?"

"Yes, sir." The boy didn't waste time, headed straight for the door.

"No earlier. No later," Christian reminded him, as he always did.

"Yes, sir," he said again and slammed the door behind him.

Christian was disappointed. With Stephen Emerson dead, changes were coming to the Philip. The quake and quiver of them rose from below, inevitable and threatening. His source said not to worry, but worry was what he did best. Worry and plan. He hadn't expected much from the man-child, of course. But he'd hoped to draw him out, tap into any information he might have overheard. Information that might prove useful as the days progressed.

Somewhat agitated, he glanced out the window and settled his gaze on the large, tree-filled planters on his rooftop terrace. They needed cutting back, watering. It was time to call Mike in for some work. Mike would talk, answer his questions—not like Sinnie, who came and went from his home like a ghost.

Yes. Mike would know what was going on. And if he didn't, he'd find out. Christian would see to that.

Silly old fool, he said to himself, settling deeper into his chair, trying to learn something from Gordy, a man whose brain was still in short britches. What would he know about the Hotel Philip... or Christian's abiding feelings for Joseph Emerson? And why would the boy in him care? He let his head rest against his chair back and closed his deep-set eyes.

So long ago. Why would anyone care?

Except him. Christian cared. And Christian remembered.

All of it... the stir of desire, the fire of ambition, the searing heat of passion—and the trust invested so deeply, so naively, in youthful dreams.

All of it... destroyed, ground under the heel of a heartless, uncaring man.

Hatred, like love, had a long shelf life.

And hatred was his friend. It kept Christian alive. It kept him sane—or his version of it.

And it kept him amused.

* * *

Joy stood outside the Hotel Philip and looked up. The morning was gray, the hotel grayer. Not the color, that was buff brick, soiled, tired, and showing every decade of its neglect. No, the grayness was in the Phil's attitude, that of a distinguished old gentlemen, once proud and natty, now self-conscious in torn pants and scuffed shoes.

The city's pigeons had accented the Phil's decline with their personal brand of scorn, leaving guano to lie like dirty snow over the arched windows on either side of the broad, once-grand entrance. One of the windows was half boarded up and a graffiti artist had been hard at work on the free wooden canvas, drawing ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM and trailing it with wild, wavelike curls in greens and reds. A neon sign was fitted, like a misplaced suture, into the alcove above the door. Buzzing and blinking in a phosphorous blue, it proclaimed Hotel Ph—ip to anyone interested in an introduction. Joy guessed not many were.

Nothing about the Hotel Philip ZOOMed.

It was much—much!—worse than she remembered.

And it was all hers, a woman who owned only what she could carry and rented the rest and who hadn't spent more than six months in any one place in too many years to count. She shook her head. Stephen Emerson had one wicked sense of humor.

She scanned the hotel front again and swallowed. What a waste. Neglect, a thousand sins of omission, and this was the forlorn result. No doubt the Hotel Philip might have been a charmer in its day, but its day was past.

She glanced up and down the littered street, a mélange of pawn shops, Eastern-style eateries, vacant stores, and, strangely, a bright new coffee shop. It looked like a freshly capped tooth in a mouthful of cavities. She knew from her cab ride here that better times were encroaching on this forsaken street. A block away a major revitalization plan was in the works, and a new hotel was rumored to be on the boards two blocks to the east with shops to follow. But, except for the coffee shop, nothing like that was in evidence here.

The cabbie called it the street Seattle forgot. She tended to agree.

A light rain started to fall, so she climbed the three steps to the entrance, sought what shelter she could under the buzzing blue sign to wait for David Grange. Joy didn't trust him, not that it mattered, because she didn't intend the "taking care of Lana" scenario to include a useless vetting of her current lover.

But for her mother's sake—and her own—she hoped David Grange was a prince among men. It would make her own getaway easier. On that thought, a yellow cab pulled up to the curb and disgorged said lover onto the sidewalk. He smiled up at her.

He was definitely pretty, she decided, watching him take the stairs to join her, his wide, white smile locked in place with a politician's ease. He had a dimple and probably, under his conservative blue business suit, a rather worthwhile, gym-hardened body. Not unappealing.

"Sorry I'm late. A meeting ran too long." He opened the hotel door. "Shall we?" He followed her in.

Cavernous was her first impression. Ammonia was her first scent. The place smelled like a hospital after a bacteria war. Not the stew of odors she remembered or expected.

"This is new." David looked around, eyebrows raised.

"What?"

He waved a hand. "The place is clean. The last time I was here, maybe a month ago, the lobby still had dirt from the sixties." He walked to the front desk, ran a hand along it, then lifted it. "Somebody's been busy. Maybe they finally replaced the caretaker."

Joy barely heard him. She spun slowly, raptly, in place. Time and its ravages hadn't been kind to the stately lobby, but even in its beaten, battered state it retained an old-world elegance. She didn't remember that. Today she soaked it in, marveled at it: the front desk's thick, carved walnut top—now time-blackened—sitting atop a facade of pink marble; the floors, stained and pockmarked by the passing years, showing proud traces of their once-pearly-white marble surface; the ceilings, bruised to yellow by a million cigarettes, soaring high and arched, looking down in dismay.