Remember Me, Irene

by Jan Burke

  “Don’t slip on this palm crud,” Rachel said as we crunched our way across the messy drive. The “palm crud” was actually hundreds of unfertilized dates, dropped onto the concrete over God knows how many seasons without a gardener.

  We made our way closer to the building. At one end of the hotel, we went past a metal door at street level—it was welded shut. Two floors above it, a series of small windows began, going to the top of the building. The lowest windows were broken out.

  “So much for the stairwell,” Rachel said, looking up as we continued toward the back of the building. “Look—even the fire escape has been welded in place. Bad news.”

  “Because of the danger to the unofficial tenants?”

  She nodded. “These guys light fires to stay warm; if they fall asleep, or if they’re drunk or high or careless, there goes the building—and maybe everybody in it. Or they suffocate—the fire stays under control, but they don’t have proper ventilation in the room, and the fire burns up all the oxygen.”

  We climbed some concrete steps at the back of the building. A little less picturesque than the front, the back was comprised mainly of a series of doors that had been boarded up.

  “Wood’s fairly new,” I said. “Doesn’t look like this was done so long ago.”

  “No, but look—here’s one that’s already been jimmied back open. Let me go in first, just in case any of the unofficial residents are in.”

  She pulled the big flashlight out of her belt and turned it on. As she cautiously opened the door, we were greeted with the sharp, overpowering smell of excrement.

  “Yeeech,” I said, backing away.

  She laughed. “You weren’t expecting the maid service to have the place all clean and tidy, were you?”

  “No, but I wasn’t expecting to walk into the bottom of an outhouse, either.”

  She turned her back to me, flashing the light around the large room, which was lined with rusting pipes and sets of valves. A shaft of some sort rose from one end of the room.

  “Laundry room, I think,” she said.

  “Maybe so. But nothing’s been cleaned here for a while.”

  “This isn’t so bad. Think how awful it would be if it were a warm day—just watch your step in this one place near the door,” she said, spotlighting it with the flashlight. It was about two feet away from where I stood.

  “Let’s move on, okay?”

  “Prop that door open,” she said. “I want to be able to get out of here in a hurry if we have to.”

  The door still had a stop attached to it, so I kicked it down. It held.

  We made our way to an interior door. We stepped into a long, dark hallway. Several doors led off it. The floor was sticky, and the odor of urine permeated the cold air. I tried not to think about it, and swore I’d throw my shoes away when I got home.

  “Prop that one open, too,” Rachel said. “Make it easier to find our way out.”

  As we walked away from the door, the hall grew darker, and it was the darkness and sense of confinement, not the stench, that began to stir a growing panic within me.

  I once spent a few days locked in a small, dark room as the guest of a couple of creeps who got their kicks out of hearing people scream. One result of the experience is that I sometimes have to sleep with the light on. Other times, it’s better not to go to sleep at all. Darkness is not my old friend.

  I tried to keep my mind away from memories as we went on. Rachel kept moving forward. I followed more closely. She looked back at me, holding the flashlight so that it didn’t blind me.

  “You okay? You want to wait outside?”

  I wanted it more than just about anything, but I shook my head. “Lucas knows me, he doesn’t know you.”

  “He’s not likely to be hanging out here during the day.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  She shrugged and moved on. She stopped often to listen as we approached doors. The only noises to be heard were the now-distant sounds of occasional traffic on the street, our sticky footsteps, and the hammering of my heart. My claustrophobia was kicking in.

  “We’re making our way to a stairwell,” she said, her tone gentle, coaxing. “There should be more light there.”

  I couldn’t answer.

  She looked back at me again, then put the light on the doors around us. Some were marked, most weren’t. She paused, as if debating something. I started shaking. I tried to force insistent images from my mind. This is different, I told myself. You’re safe, you’re safe. I heard my own breathing—quick, short breaths.

  “Slow down,” she said. “You want to carry the light?”

  “No.” I made myself take slower breaths.

  She reached back and took my hand, then started walking again. My own hand felt cold in hers. I wanted to protest, to say she was making me feel like a child, but I was grateful for her warm, firm grip.

  “Hope that stronzo we found back there didn’t bother you too much.”

  I shook my head. Useless in the dark. Get me out of here! I wanted to scream.

  “Look at it like a hunter would,” she said. “Think of it as fresh spoor. Maybe your friend left it.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said, my voice tight. “Somebody else, maybe. Not Lucas.”

  “Oh, so your friend the bum is such a saint he doesn’t ever take a shit, eh?”

  I pulled my hand away.

  “Oh,” she said, in the darkness, “so he’s a saint, just like St. Anthony?” She kept moving forward; I was forced to follow at a faster pace. “The saint who never took a dump,” she went on. “What a fantastic miracle to have to one’s credit!”

  I felt my fists clench. “Stop it.”

  “Maybe the pope will make him patron saint of the asshole. St. Bum of the bum.”

  “Goddamn it, Rachel,” I shouted, “shut the fuck up!”

  The words echoed in the hallway. She stopped, and flashed the light on the door just ahead of us. EXIT was painted on it. She turned back to look at me, bouncing the light off a nearby wall, illuminating both of our faces. She was smiling. “Much better.”

  I realized what she had done, why she had done it. I dropped my gaze. “Forgive me if I don’t say ‘thank you’ right away.”

  She laughed and opened the door.

  There was light in the stairwell, and more air, a combination which helped me to calm down. I raced past her, up the stairs to the first broken window. I put my face up to the opening, took deep, gulping breaths of cold, fresh air. The knots went out of my stomach, I stopped shaking. Then, on that wave of relief, for the next few moments, I felt as if I might start crying.

  At one time, an emotional reaction like that would have made me ashamed of myself. Now, I was growing used to it, and perhaps because I knew it would pass, it passed more quickly. I looked over at Rachel, who was waiting behind me on the landing, pretending to be studying her cellular phone. Her long hair cloaked her face, hiding her expression.

  “Are my nose and cheeks as red as yours?” I asked.

  She looked up. “Yes, and your orecchi—your ears, too.”

  I reached up and rubbed a hand through my hair. “I can’t wait for this to grow out again.”

  “It will, it will. That stubbornness of yours will push it right out of your head. Your hair will be longer than mine by summer.”

  I laughed.

  She smiled. “A good sound, that laugh of yours,” she said, putting the phone away. She began to lead the way upstairs again. “I figure we should start at the top. That okay with you?”

  “We’re thinking the same thing. Corky said Lucas liked to go to the upper floors in a building.”

  “Right.”

  There was little conversation after that. The task of climbing fourteen flights of stairs kept us both warm and quiet. Rachel was in terrific shape; Frank, Mr. Really Great You-Know-What, once told me that Rachel had shamed him into a more rigorous workout. I was still making a comeback from having been laid up for a while; for the
last few floors, I had to put real effort into it.

  At the top floor, we stepped out into a dark area near a set of elevators. We rounded a corner into a dimly lit hallway. The light was coming from two large glass doors, long plates of frosted green glass. Deco-style woodwork of mahogany and chrome framed the doors. Twin angels, as solemn as their counterparts on the exterior of the building, faced us. Draped in heavy robes, each held a sword.

  “The angels on this building are the saddest heavenly creatures I’ve ever seen in my life,” Rachel said, pushing one of the doors open. “Maybe I won’t feel too bad if I go the other way.”

  The doors opened on to one large room. Light streamed in from three directions, from long windows that must have once offered a fantastic view of the city and the water. Now, taller buildings blocked much of that view. Behind us, a long bar carved with smiling cherubs stood before a big mirror that had lost a lot of its silvering.

  “The happier angels are here at the bar,” I said, my voice echoing in the empty room.

  “I guess those serious types at the door are the bouncers,” she said.

  “Guardian angels. Must be—if my guess about the age of the building is right, that glass and the rest of this place survived the big quake of 1933.”

  Rachel shivered and made an Italian gesture to ward off evil. “Don’t say the word ‘earthquake,’” she said. A hardwood floor, scarred and buckling, remained in place, although I doubted that anything other than dust motes had danced in this room in the last few decades. I squatted down closer to the floor to look at it from another angle.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone has been staying up here,” Rachel was saying.

  “No, but look at the floor. Someone sat up here and admired the view.”

  There were places here and there that might have been old footprints, but a set that was clearly newer led across the floor to a place along the south-facing windows, and back again to the doors. Whatever tables and chairs had been in the room had long ago been removed, but an overturned crate was propped up near the windows where the footprints ended.

  “Let’s take a look,” she said.

  “These windows face south, toward the ocean.”

  “Do you think he was trying to look at the water?”

  “Couldn’t see much of it from here.”

  Near the crate, the view from the windows took in a narrow glimpse of the sea. The buildings directly across the street didn’t block the view, but several blocks away, especially along Broadway, a long cluster of skyscrapers stood between the Angelus and the Pacific Ocean. One in particular caught my attention—a black glass monolith, one of the tallest buildings downtown. Three letters crowned the giant: BLP. The Bank of Las Piernas. Ben Watterson’s bank.

  “Let’s try the next floor down,” I said.

  THERE WAS NO LIGHT in the hallway on the fourteenth floor of the Angelus Hotel, but there was still plenty of cold air. It didn’t stink like the first-floor hallway, making me wonder if that was one reason Lucas took the trouble to climb all of those stairs in the buildings he slept in.

  Rachel grew cautious again, listening carefully before opening the first door we came to. As it creaked open, she waited a moment in the hallway before stepping into the room. I crept in after her.

  Only when a hotel room is absolutely empty do you realize how small it is. No carpet, no drapes, no bed. A radiator against the wall beneath the window. Only the window trim and wainscoting kept the room from being utterly plain. I could see our breath as we looked around.

  No sound.

  Rachel glanced in the small bathroom and closet.

  “Nobody has been in here for ages. Let’s keep looking.”

  As we left the room, I started to pull the door shut.

  “No, leave it open,” she said. “More light in the hallway.” She paused, then added, “Would you like me to open one of those windows?”

  I shook my head. “I’m okay now. Thanks—for offering, and for what you did earlier.”

  “You know I didn’t mean it, right? It’s just that you were looking like you might pass out down there, and that was the first thing I could think of to distract you.”

  “You were successful. And yes, I know you didn’t mean it. But next time, let’s just argue politics or religion.”

  “Wouldn’t have worked as fast,” she said, then leaned an ear to the next door. We opened six doors on six small rooms on the fourteenth floor of the Angelus, and found nothing.

  On the seventh try, we found Lucas.

  14

  HE LOOKED DIFFERENT from when I had met him on the bus bench. Cleaner, for the most part. He had cut his hair and shaved since then. He wore the same jacket, but it had been washed. Beneath it, he was casually dressed—in worn jeans, a flannel shirt, running shoes.

  Near him, in an open duffel bag, was a neatly folded suit. A pair of dress shoes next to the bag looked as if they had just been polished. If he had been wearing those clothes, he would have looked even more like the man I knew in college.

  It’s strange, the things that will haunt you. In many later moments, I would think about the care he took with the suit and the shoes, and I would waste wishes.

  He lay face-up on a sleeping bag. His breath wasn’t chilled like Rachel’s or mine—he wasn’t breathing at all. There was a small amount of dried blood on his face, as there was on the floor and the radiator. A thermos bottle lay on its side near his feet; on the floor beneath its gaping mirror mouth, a pool of liquid had congealed into a pancake-sized stain.

  And someone had placed dull pennies on his eyes.

  That much I saw.

  Rachel had seen him first, and quickly turned and tried to block my way, but I looked over her shoulder. She held on to me, pushing against me as I tried hard to push past her. I learned that I’m no match for her—but I put up a decent struggle before I stumbled backward out into the hall. She followed, somehow keeping me from falling. When I had regained my balance, she quickly reached back and closed the door behind her.

  “No—stay back,” she said, seeing I was willing to go at it again.

  “It’s Lucas,” I said.

  “Not anymore.”

  “Yes—”

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “Come on, you don’t want to march your big feet all over the evidence now, do you?”

  Evidence.

  There’s something of a blank in my recollections from the point that she asked that question until a little later, when we were sitting on the floor of the room next to Lucas’s. I was too numb, I suppose, to register most of it. I heard and didn’t hear Rachel talking to me. Felt and didn’t feel her arm around my shoulder.

  I suddenly realized she was swearing like crazy in Italian. It startled me out of my detachment. She was holding her cellular phone in her free hand.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, sitting up straighter.

  “Can’t get a signal in here. Wait right here, okay?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly, “just over to the window.”

  I watched as she struggled to get the window open. “Dammit. Fricking thingamajiggy won’t work. Probably hasn’t been opened in fifty years.” To my amazement, she pulled out her flashlight and used the grip end to bust out the window. “Destroying private property,” she muttered, clearing the last fragments from the frame. “Pete will really be thrilled.”

  With phone in hand, she leaned out the window, then pushed some buttons. “This will only take a minute,” she said to me.

  “Caro?” she said into the phone. “Listen, we’ve got a situation here… No, just a… no, will you listen? Si calmi! Christ. Stà zitto! Put Frank on… No, I’m not going to say another word to you… oh, really? Well, va f’an culo, Mr. Big Shit Detective. I’m hanging up. And if this phone rings, it had better be your partner calling!”

  She pressed a button. “Excuse me,” she said to me—very calmly, as if she hadn’t just be
en insulting her husband bilingually and with enough gestures to make a mime envious.

  I just looked at her. I felt as if I were watching an experimental theater production from a front row seat. Up close, and it still didn’t make sense. I put my head down on my knees.

  “Irene,” she started to say, but the phone chirped. She pushed a button and leaned out the window again.

  “Frank? What do you know—he’s catching on. Listen, we found Irene’s friend. Possible 187… Yeah. Well, exactly. I’ll tell you in a minute—we’re in an old hotel, and it’s a little hard to describe how to get here. You out of earshot of your boss? Good. Now, what I want to say is, I think the situation could use a little TLC, you know what I mean? Yeah, I’ll let you talk to her. She’s right here. But about the, er, business aspects of all of this… exactly. Good… And can you talk Carlos Hernandez into handling this one himself?” There was a long pause, then she said, “No. Not from the looks of things.” She glanced over at me. “Coins on the eyes, for one thing. Also some sort of head injury, although—no, of course not. Stepped right back out of there… Yeah. We’re at the Angelus Hotel. Fourteenth floor.” She gave him the address, and when she started to describe the entry, I interrupted her.

  “Tell them about the footprints near the drive.”

  She passed the message along, gave him a few more details, then gestured for me to come near the window. I took the phone, and leaned out as she had done.

  “Irene?” I heard him say.

  “Tell Pete not to blame Rachel.”

  “They’ll be all right. How are you doing?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that.

  “Irene?”

  “I know it won’t be your case,” I said. “But do you think you could come over here, maybe take me home afterward?”

  “Of course. We’ll be there soon.”

  “Thanks. Here’s Rachel.” I handed the phone back to her and sat against a wall, the one facing the wall which adjoined Lucas’s room.

  Questions and guilt and disbelief took turns somersaulting through my mind. Rachel talked for a while to Frank and somebody else in the homicide division, then hung up the phone and sat down next to me.