Evil in All Its Disguises

by Hilary Davidson

  “Thanks, Denny.”

  “Just don’t let Gavin find you,” she said. “And if he does, please don’t tell him how you got that card.”

  “Do you think he wants to kill me, too?”

  “I never imagined he’d kill Skye,” Denny said. “I don’t know what he’s capable of anymore.”

  CHAPTER 42

  When I went back to my suite through the connecting door, I looked around, wondering if there was anything I should grab before making a run for it. I had to wait for a few minutes for Denny to get rid of the guard outside my door. He tried to argue with her when she told him to carry her suitcase downstairs, but he finally obeyed.

  As I walked down the corridor, holding the key card, I noticed that the lights were turned very low, making the angles and corners suddenly spooky. This really was an old castle, even if it had been turned into a playground for tourists. There was blood in its history, if the sad story behind its ghost was to be believed. I thought of Skye’s body, abandoned in a moldy, dusty room. There was blood in the Hotel Cerón’s present, too.

  Near the elevator, I felt like tiptoeing. The card burned hot in my hand. What if this was just another wild goose chase? I was Gavin’s prisoner, and there I was, wandering around the floor like a child playing a game. Or worse, a madwoman who’d been locked away. I thought of Poe’s Madeline Usher, buried alive in the mansion she shared with her brother. In the story, her brother claimed the house was sentient. The two of them were tied to it in life and death. Somehow the endless gloom of the Hotel Cerón had made itself at home inside of me.

  As I rounded the curve on the opposite end of the hallway, in sight of Pete’s room, I noticed a door without a number. I tried the key, saw the blink of the green light, and heard the whirring of a door unlocking. I slowly pushed it open. Inside was a yawning black pit that reeked of damp earth. A metal cord dangled against the inside wall, and I pulled it. Somewhere below me, a light went on, its yellow glow illuminating a wooden staircase. The rickety, splintery stairs were nothing like the opulence of the Hotel Cerón’s public facade. It was as if a third-world village were hiding inside the splendid palace.

  Letting the door close behind me, I tried to steady my breathing. The smell of the moldering wood and plaster didn’t help. Pretend you’re a ghost; maybe if you move like one, you’ll get out of here, I told myself. Or maybe Claudia’s voice said it; I wasn’t sure anymore. The darkness in my mind was mirrored by the world around me, and my own ghosts had slipped by whatever tethered them to me. They were everywhere.

  I walked down flights of stairs, but that seemed only to take me one story down, judging from the big, red “4” written on the wall. More flights down led to a “3.” Progress, at least.

  There were lights on the landings and a few bare bulbs hanging by wires along the walls, but much of the space was dark. It was hard to imagine the Hotel Cerón’s staff trudging through here, day after day, while guests meandered through broad, gilded hallways. Would it really offend anyone’s sensibilities to see a maid walking by with a stack of towels? Even in the low light, the steps felt as if they were turning to dust under my feet. There were cracks on the walls, splintering out like the branches of a tree. The grand edifice of the hotel no longer felt so stable.

  Keep going, I told myself. There was nothing to do except move ahead.

  I made my way farther down. The tightness of the space and the lack of light made it feel as if things were closing in on me, and that made it hard, in turn, for me to get enough air into my lungs. It was my old foe, claustrophobia, but there was more to it than that. There was a scent of decay that got stronger as I took each step down. It filled my nostrils and seeped into my bloodstream, making me feel dim and light-headed. Forcing myself to continue, I noticed a whirring sound. Was I imagining all of that? It was hard to tell fact from fiction. I was inside a castle, and I’d found my way into its dungeon; I wondered if I would be able to walk out of it again.

  There was a chain attached to the wall, and the sight of it stopped me midstep. I couldn’t see a purpose for it; maybe it didn’t have one anymore. I viewed the Hotel Cerón as a modern-day House of Usher, but the chain pushed that out of my head. All I could think of was another story of Poe’s, “The Cask of Amontillado.” As much as I loved Poe, I’d never liked that tale, because I couldn’t understand why the narrator wanted revenge on his friend. He started out saying there were a thousand injuries, but he couldn’t take the insult; it was never clear what the friend had done. Still, those transgressions were the reason the narrator lured his friend into a catacomb, chained him to a wall, and buried him alive. Naturally, Claudia had loved the story. You don’t understand it, she told me. He didn’t need a reason to kill his friend. He already had his justification.

  In some ways, she’d been a very wise child. I had a feeling that eleven-year-old Claudia would have seen the truth about Gavin long before I did. He didn’t have a reason for what he was doing, but he had an arsenal of justification. He’d shown me that over breakfast. What had he said about Martin? He’d love for everyone to think he does a great job running Pantheon, but the truth is he’s just extraordinarily talented at claiming the credit for other people’s work. I’d realized then that he hated Martin, and I’d found it amusing when he called Martin “Pharaoh.” I should have found it threatening. Taking on a pharaoh meant using whatever he loved against him. I knew Gavin was cozying up to me, but I’d been unwilling to see myself as a mere pawn.

  In pace requiescat, I remembered suddenly. That was what Gavin had said in his office. Those were the final words of the story, too.

  When I finally reached the next landing, I found I had nowhere to go except a lighted tunnel in front of me. The whirring was louder, and the air smelled a little sweeter. Breathable, in any case. It wasn’t until I got to the lighted doorway that I understood why. I was in the basement of the Hotel Cerón, and I’d discovered its laundry room; one big washing machine was working away. A maid sat dozing in a chair. I backed out, relieved she hadn’t seen me, until I felt something scramble over my foot. It wasn’t a snake this time, but a rat. I gasped and watched it twitch its tail dismissively at me before scurrying down the corridor and through a hole in the wall. There were other rats around that hole, I realized, coming and going as if Grand Central Terminal lay just behind it. I edged my way along the other wall, holding my breath for fear of plague or hantavirus or whatever the hell they carried, and I kept my eyes on them. The hole in the wall had a rock tucked into it, but that wasn’t exactly barring rodent access. The rats looked at me, and it seemed as if their beady black eyes were weighing me, considering how good a meal I’d make, before they lost interest.

  I kept my hand on the opposite wall, for fear of falling, and my fingers slid into a crevice. Jumping back, I pulled my hand away, afraid of being bitten or worse. The wall was a mass of giant fractures, like a piece of shattered glass that was still barely held together by inertia. Looking around, I realized that the other wall, with its rat-hole, was at least as bad. It was impossible to reconcile the glamorous, gilded world above with this rancid pit below.

  No wonder the place didn’t have guests, I thought. It’s rotting from inside, and it’s going to fall apart one day soon. Pantheon never would have bought it if they’d inspected it. Even if Gavin were to succeed in getting rid of Martin, his Mexican empire was already crumbling.

  When I got to the next staircase, I rushed up the fragile steps as quickly as I could. Part of my brain feared the rats giving chase; another part wondered if the foundation would crack apart and fall in before I got upstairs. Whatever areas of my brain that weren’t consumed by those fears pondered whether I’d find a door to the outside world, or if I’d be trapped and have to run the gauntlet of rats and corroded concrete again. Shoving open the door, I gulped warm, humid air into my lungs, before noticing two men who were waiting just beyond. They were holding guns.

  CHAPTER 43

  One of the men smiled a
t me, revealing gold teeth under a caterpillar mustache. The other just stared. They pointed me up a short flight of whitewashed cement steps, opening a door inside and taking me down the long, winding corridor, past the jewelry shop and the spa and the other dark storefronts. There was nowhere to run. One man led; the other stayed behind me. There was nothing I could do but follow.

  In the lobby were half a dozen men, all of whom had guns. I felt as if I were marching into the O.K. Corral; visions of John Wayne movies and a shimmering image of Gregory Peck in High Noon played in my head. It was High Midnight in Acapulco, apparently. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was only ten o’clock. Clearly my muscle-relaxant-induced nap had messed with my internal clock. I wasn’t tired, but I was suddenly starving.

  I recognized a couple of the men. One was the big-bellied loudmouth who’d accosted me with a gun on the hotel grounds, when I discovered the field of half-built bungalows. The other was the fiftyish waiter who’d served me in the bar when I was with Skye. I didn’t see the clerk from reception who’d checked me in the night before.

  “Buen trabajo,” the waiter said, congratulating them on capturing me.

  The waiter led the way behind the reception desk and knocked on Gavin’s office door. When Gavin told him to come in, the waiter opened the door. “Hello, sir. Look at what the dog dragged in,” he said.

  “The cat, Eduardo. It’s look at what the cat dragged in.” Gavin took a last, long drag on a cigarette and dropped it into a glass. I’d never seen him smoke, and I wondered if this was a new habit for him, something he’d hidden along with his true character.

  Gavin stood, pulling at his clothing in a vain attempt to reverse the creases that were piling up. At ten o’clock at night, he was still wearing his suit jacket. It didn’t look so formal now; there were deep creases and dark splotches on it. I didn’t want to think about what the dark splotches were.

  “Come in,” Gavin said. As we stepped forward, he put one hand up. “No, wait. Let’s go to the Urdaneta Room.” It reminded me of how he’d changed his mind that morning, when he was ordering breakfast. As organized and robotic as Gavin was, perhaps not every decision he made was scripted. “How does that sound, Lily?”

  “Fine.” If I was going to be in a prison, it might as well be a beautiful one.

  Gavin picked up a laptop bag and walked beside me down the airless hall. Eduardo the waiter was a few steps ahead, while the two goons still shadowed us.

  “Do you really need three men with guns to protect you from me?” I asked Gavin.

  “You’re more dangerous than you look.”

  “Then carry your own damn gun.”

  “That’s not what a gentleman does,” Gavin shot back.

  He really was like Martin, I realized. His claim made me remember something Bruxton’s NYPD partner, Norah Renfrew, said about Martin. Mr. Sklar doesn’t seem the type to do his own shooting, know what I mean? Carrying a gun and doing the dirty work, those were jobs for underlings. The man at the top could order up whatever horrible thing came into his head, but as long as he kept his own hands clean and his suit pristine, he could go on thinking of himself as a gentleman.

  At that moment, I was filled with hatred for Gavin, but also for Martin and for everyone who ran Pantheon. There they were, calling themselves gods—a pantheon was, literally a collection of gods, after all—and they behaved as if they were unaccountable to mortals. Fraud at Pantheon? No, it was more like Pantheon was a fraud.

  “Here we are,” Gavin said as we got to the door. Eduardo held it open for us. “We’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Gavin added, not even bothering to look at the goons. “Wait in the hall.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Urdaneta Room was only dimly lit, and Gavin turned up the overhead lights. Even without natural light, it was a lovely space, but its charm was lost on me. The flowers were cloying and oversweet, and the iron trellises over the windows looked like very elaborate prison bars. One time, when I’d visited Toronto, I’d toured the Old Don Jail, which had metalwork in the shape of stunning dragons and snakes; that didn’t make it any less of a prison.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Gavin asked.

  “Go ahead. I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I like to be private. Cigarette?” he offered.

  “No, thanks.” I looked around the room. Was the only exit really that lone door to the hallway? I stared at the windows, wondering if the glass could be knocked out. The trellis was too tightly knit in most places to squeeze through, but if there weren’t any glass…

  “There’s no way out of this room but the door,” Gavin said, as if reading my mind. “The glass is so completely bulletproof you could fire a machine gun at it and there’d be no cracking. It’s also got a special coating so that no one outside can see into the room.”

  That made sense; when I’d walked around the hotel, I hadn’t seen this room from the outside. “I was wondering about ventilation. Cigarette smoke isn’t good for that painting you’re so proud of.”

  “Ah, Proserpine.” Gavin set the laptop on the table and walked up to the painting, staring at it while smoke swirled around him. “Do you know what the strangest thing is, Lily?”

  “I have a feeling I’m about to find out.”

  “Oh, you are charming. I used to think that luxury meant opulence, and having everything you want. But I’ve found that all of the pleasure is in the hunt. I don’t really care to keep things. They become this awful responsibility, almost a millstone around one’s neck.” He moved closer to the painting. “Even the finest things are just things. You can destroy them if you wish, and no one else can ever have them again.” He turned to look at me and gave me that grim smile. Death face, Apolinar had called him, and I understood exactly what he meant. There was an appetite for destruction inside Gavin, and it was insatiable.

  “Is that why you killed Skye?” I asked.

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “You expect me to believe someone else did?”

  “I don’t care what you believe. What I know is that the man who killed her was just the instrument. If I had to guess, I’d say the idea wasn’t his.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He dragged on his cigarette, staring out the window. “I had no idea how ridiculous and sentimental Skye was until recently. I suppose that happens when you only see each other for a week here, a weekend there. I thought I knew her. I believed we were on the same page, that we might actually want the same things.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “Do you know what she really wanted? Marriage and a family. Can you picture that? What would I want with a child? How stupid was Skye to think that?”

  “Naive. Hopeful. Optimistic,” I said. “Not stupid.”

  “She wouldn’t have gotten pregnant if she’d had a working brain.”

  That floored me. “Skye was pregnant?”

  “Yes. You didn’t know? She blindsided me with the news last night. She knew what I was planning, and she knew how much it meant to me, but she decided to be a fool and confront me with her preposterous ultimatum.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her to get rid of it, of course. I certainly didn’t want any part of it. She wailed like a madwoman, carrying on about how she would raise the child without me, and I’d be sorry.”

  “That was why you killed her?”

  “Are you deaf? I told you, I didn’t do it.” He glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “I wanted to strangle her last night. But she went storming off and I was relieved. I thought she’d gone away. I had no idea she was still inside the hotel.”

  “If you didn’t kill her, who did?”

  “Martin.”

  His accusation didn’t rattle me; it was utter nonsense. “Skye died in this hotel, Gavin. You’re the one standing here, not Martin.”

  “I didn’t say he magically appeared and did the job himself. Martin’s always got someone working for him on the inside. That’s another thing I lear
ned from him.” Gavin gave a joyless laugh. “You know, I actually thought it might be that lumbering fool Pete Dukermann. It seemed highly suspicious that he just happened to run into Skye in the zocalo, and then, when Denny told him he couldn’t stay here, he called someone at Pantheon’s PR office, who forced us to let him in.” Gavin shook his head. “I’m almost disappointed to find that he isn’t Martin’s man, after all. That would have been impressively creative on Pharaoh’s part.”

  “Where is Pete now?”

  “In one of the bungalows. We gave him rather a working over, I’m afraid. Of course, he’s another detail I’ll have to deal with later.”

  “So you know he didn’t kill Skye?” I pressed.

  “There was a nanosecond when I thought it was possible that he’d killed her,” Gavin said. “Until I realized poor, hapless Pete was the recipient of the world’s laziest frame-up job.”

  “Who would frame him?”

  That earned a smirk. “My dear Lily. Always the last to know.” He dropped his cigarette on the floor and lit another. “You know what’s disappointing to me, Lily? I know there’s nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, that would devastate Martin as much as the thought of you in my bed. Yet here I am, and there you are, and the thought of sleeping with you doesn’t appeal to me at all.”

  “I’m crushed.”

  “At first, I thought it was because I don’t go in for brunettes. I always think the blonder, the better. And while I do very much approve of the way you dress, there’s something very tough and low-class behind it all. I can see why Ava Gardner appeals to you. What was it she was called? Grabtown Girl. That’s you to a T, Lily.”

  At one time, not that long ago, the idea that someone could see past the surface polish to the depths of my grubby roots would have been painful to me. Then, after Claudia’s death, I’d given up my glamorous facade for a while, and I’d been surprised to find I missed it. Instinctively, I’d gravitated to it again, but my reasons had changed; I enjoyed glamour, simply because I loved beautiful things, especially when they had history. But I didn’t need to hide behind them anymore.