The Ninth Nightmare (38 page)

Charlie stood up. ‘You're not going to regret this, Walter. I really think we're going to have this case cracked.'

‘
Cracked
is the word for it.'

Charlie went off to the find the manager, and Walter turned around to wave to the waitress and order another beer. As he did so, he saw John step out of the elevator and walk past the entrance to the Lantern Bar.

He squeezed his way out of the booth and waddled out into the lobby. John had found himself an armchair underneath a potted palm, and was shaking open a day-old copy of the
Baton Rouge Advocate
. Walter approached him and stood right in front of him, with his arms folded.

John lowered his paper. The headline was
Iguana Regulation Bill Killed
. The state senate had decided it was unnecessary to control the sale of pet iguanas, despite the fact that they could grow to ten feet long and pose a lethal threat to children and small animals.

‘Not taxi-driving tonight?' asked Walter.

‘Taking some time off, detective. Catching up with some homespun gossip from B.R.'

‘Right here? In the Griffin House Hotel?'

‘Is there a law against it?'

‘Not that I know of.'

John looked up at Walter, unblinking. It was obvious that Walter felt that there was something suspicious about him sitting here, but he couldn't think what it was. After a few moments, Walter said, ‘OK. But watch the attitude, OK?'

‘Oh, you bet,' said John. ‘I'm keeping my attitude under constant scrutiny.'

Walter returned to the Lantern Bar, although he stopped and turned around before he went back inside, and gave John a look that almost made the potted palm wither up. John, for his part, shook his newspaper ostentatiously, lifted it up high in front of him, and pretended to read an article about people in Baton Rouge burning trash in their back yards and creating too much toxic smoke.

John was sitting in the lobby to keep a watch for Mago Verde. He didn't expect Gordon Veitch to walk into the hotel wearing his clown make-up, but he reckoned he could pick out a Dread without too much difficulty. There was something about Dreads which he always recognized – a
blurriness
, as if he were seeing them through a fogged-up window.

From his vantage point beside the potted palm, he could clearly see the main entrance, as well as the elevators and the stairs. He could also see the entrance to the Lantern Bar and the Boa Vinda Restaurant and the corridor that led to the hotel parking-lot in back. The only way that anybody could enter or leave the hotel without him noticing them was if they climbed up one of the fire escapes.

He checked the time by the art deco clock standing by the reception desk. Seven-twelve. Kieran had promised to relieve him after two hours and he knew that he was going to need relieving. The smell of pan-fried escalopes of veal was wafting his way from the restaurant and he hadn't eaten since twelve thirty.

Upstairs, meanwhile, Kieran, Kiera and Rhodajane had walked up and down every corridor and looked into every door that was open. When they returned to Rhodajane's room, they found Springer sitting on the balcony, keeping an eye on the fire escapes.

‘Nothing,' said Kieran, as he closed the door behind him. ‘Maybe he's not coming.'

‘Oh, he will, I'm absolutely sure of it,' said Springer. ‘After your attack on him last night, Brother Albrecht is going to be very anxious to complete the sacrificial ritual as soon as possible. Think about it: this could be his last and only chance to bring his circus back to reality.'

It was growing dark outside, and street lights were beginning to twinkle all around University Circle.

Kiera said, ‘What if we miss him? What if he manages to get into the hotel without us seeing him?'

‘Then you'll have to go after him in Brother Albrecht's dream, and hope that you can nail him before he manages to hand over his sacrifice.'

‘And if we can't get to him before that?'

‘I don't know,' said Springer, gravely. He was still in the guise of Dean Brunswick III, but he was beginning to look older and grayer than he had at first, as if the alcoholic ravages of Deano's later life were catching up with him. ‘I guess you'll just have to give it all you've got, and hope for the best.'

‘That sounds like a plan,' said Kieran. ‘Not.'

‘I don't know what else I can say,' Springer told him. ‘For some reason, Brother Albrecht appears to be invulnerable to the most powerful existential weapon in Dom Magator's armory. Maybe he's vulnerable to something more rudimentary – like a regular bullet-firing gun, or a crossbow bolt, or an ax.'

‘You think we should try chopping his
head
off?' said Kiera, her eyes wide with revulsion.

‘It wouldn't hurt,' said Rhodajane. ‘Not
us
, anyhow.'

Springer said, ‘Anyhow, all we can do is wait. Mago Verde may have abducted and mutilated a ninth victim already, but he still has to come here and dream what he did to them into the hotel walls. Hopefully, that should give us enough time to find him. And even if we
can't
find him, thousands of people all around the Great Lakes will be asleep by then, and dreaming, and at least some of them will be dreaming about Brother Albrecht's circus. We can enter one of their dreams and go after him.'

‘I have a real bad feeling that this isn't going turn out too good,' said Kiera.

‘And what about our mom?' asked Kieran.

‘I can't tell you,' said Springer. ‘You'll have to play this as it comes. If you get the chance to rescue her, then take it. But I can't offer you any guarantees. I can't even offer you a plan. The truth is, with Brother Albrecht, I don't even know what we're up against.'

TWENTY

The Ninth Nightmare

B
y twenty after eight, Walter had checked out seventeen rooms and two de luxe suites. It was police procedure at its most procedural, and to make matters worse he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to be looking for. A pattern? An
ennead
– whatever the hell that was?

Five of the rooms he had thankfully found unoccupied, but when he had knocked at the doors of all of the others the patter had always been the same. ‘Good evening, sir, madam. Real sorry to disturb you but my name is Detective Wisocky from the University Circle PD and I'm making a routine security check of all of the rooms in the Griffin House Hotel. Do you mind if I take a quick look around? It will only take a moment.'

Almost every time, the guest had asked him, ‘What exactly is it you're looking for, detective?'

‘Signs of disturbance.'

‘Oh.' Pause. ‘So what do they look like, these signs of disturbance?'

‘Hard to describe. But – you know – we always recognize them when see them.'

‘Oh.'

Maybe Charlie had been talking b.., but in some of the rooms that Walter had walked into – not all of them – he had felt a distinctly unwelcoming atmosphere. Not exactly a tangible chill, but a feeling that there was somebody else's presence here, somebody hostile, apart from the current guests. It had given him the same discomfort that he felt when he walked into an unfamiliar house, when the owners were away, or when they had been killed. Even the family photographs over the fireplace seemed to frown at him disapprovingly.

After he had finished checking every room on the sixth and seventh floors, he sat down on the couch next to the elevators and unfolded his hotel floor-plan. Taking out his pen, he marked a cross against every room where he had felt unsettled. Five on the sixth floor and three on the seventh floor. Only eight altogether. But when he laid one floor-plan over the other, he saw that it would have taken the addition of only one more room to make a nine-cornered star.

He sat back. Now, was this a coincidence or what? He was tempted to call Charlie and tell him what he had discovered. But he had picked those eight rooms only because of some indefinable feeling of unease, and not because of any empirical evidence that Mago Verde or Mago Verde's successor had ever been there. OK, so he was Hunch Detective, but maybe this was one hunch too far. He didn't want to look like an asshole.

He looked at the floor-plans again. The room which would have completed the nine-cornered star was Room 702, which had been unoccupied. Maybe he hadn't experienced that unwelcoming feeling in Room 702 because Mago Verde hadn't yet visited it.

He took out his cellphone and called the front desk. ‘Detective Wisocky here. Can you tell me if Room Seven-Oh-Two is booked for tonight?'

‘Please hold on a moment, sir.'

Walter sat and waited. As he did so, he felt a sudden draft, as if somebody had walked past him, yet the corridor was completely deserted.
Shit
, he thought.
I'm giving myself the heebie-jeebies. I don't seriously believe in any of this dream crap.

The desk clerk came back to him. ‘Yes, sir. Room Seven-Oh-Two is booked for tonight. One night only.'

‘Under what name?'

‘Wisocky, sir. Same as yours. Now, that's a coincidence, wouldn't you say?'

‘It's been booked in the name of
Wisocky
?'

‘Yes, sir. Cash in advance.'

‘Shit. When was it booked?'

‘This evening, sir. Six ten p.m.'

‘Shit. Why the
fuck
didn't you tell me? I've just spent two hours knocking on every goddamned door on the sixth and seventh floors and I needn't have bothered.'

‘I'm sorry, sir. You didn't ask.'

‘What did the guy look like?'

‘Excuse me?'

‘The guy who made the booking. What did he look like? Thin, fat, short, tall? Black, white, Hispanic, Chinese, what?'

‘White, sir. Thin. Not too tall, not too short. I can't say I got a really good look at him.'

‘He made a booking right in front of you and you didn't get a really good look at him?'

‘No, sir. I can't say that I did.'

‘What about his address?'

‘Give me a moment, sir. Oh, yes. Here it is. Five-one-oh-two, Pearl Road, Cleveland.'

‘You know where that is?'

‘Not exactly, sir. No.'

‘It's the fucking Clown Museum.'

Walter snapped his cellphone shut. Again, he was tempted to call Charlie, but then he thought:
this is beginning to smell more and more like some kind of practical joke.
Maybe Charlie wasn't in on it, but that Henry Marriott could well have set it up. As elderly as he was, he was still a clown, wasn't he? And what did clowns do, except trip people up and make them look like suckers?

Stepping into other people's dreams, for Christ's sake. Henry had almost had him believing it, and Charlie had been taken in, hook, line and sinker.

He followed the sign to Room 702. He found it right at the end of the corridor, with a
Do Not Disturb
tag hanging on the knob. He knocked, and called out, ‘Open up, sir! Police!'

He waited, but there was no response. He knocked again, ‘Police! Can you hear me, sir? You need to open this door right now!'

Still no response. He took out the pass key that the hotel manager had given him, and unlocked the door. He eased it open an inch, and then he lifted his gun out of its holster.

‘This is the CPD, sir! I want you standing in the center of the room with your hands where I can see them!'

He pushed the door wider. As far as he could see, there was nobody in the bedroom, although the bedcover was turned down and the bedside lamps were both lit. He edged his way past the closet, holding his gun up in front of him. He slid open both closet doors as he passed, and quickly glanced inside, but there was nobody hiding there and no clothes hanging up.

He checked the bathroom. There was nobody in there, either, and none of the complimentary toiletries had been used. It looked as if ‘Mr Wisocky' hadn't arrived yet. If this was a practical joke, he probably
wouldn't
arrive. But why spend nearly two hundred dollars to book a room, just for the sake of a practical joke?

He backed out of the bathroom, stowing his gun back into its holster. As he did so, a hoarse voice behind him said, ‘Well, done, fatso! You worked it out!'

He turned around, yanking out his gun again, but two muscular hands gripped his wrist and twisted the gun away from him. He found himself confronted by a tall, angular man with wild white shoulder-length hair and a pale gray face. His eyes were surrounded by smudgy black make-up and his lips were painted into a glistening green grin. For some reason, Walter found it hard to focus on him, as if he were seeing him through a steamed-up window.

‘Got you now, tin man, don't I? Thought you could stymie my sacrifice, did you? Well, now you can make amends! You'd like to make amends, wouldn't you?'

‘Sorry, pal,' Walter retorted. ‘I don't know what the hell you're talking about.' His gun had been thrown on to the bed and he glanced at it quickly, trying to work out his chances of diving across the quilt to reach it. Probably nil, for a man of his bulk.

‘You and your friends caused the Grand Freak a whole lot of heartache last night,' the clown told him. ‘Killing Doctor Friendly, and the Grand Freak's favorite fire-breather, and his harlequin, too. He never cared too much for Brown Jenkin, but then who did? But you still made the Grand Freak very angry by blowing Brown Jenkin's head off.'

‘I told you,' said Walter. ‘I don't know what the hell you're blabbering on about. However I do know that you're under arrest for assaulting a police officer.' He took out his cellphone and flipped it open, but when he tried to call Charlie, all he could hear was crackling. He hit the phone several times against the heel of his hand, but it still didn't work.