The Throat

by Peter Straub

  “How did you come to check us in the first place, officer?”

  “Some lunatic called me this afternoon, asking me to meet him here this morning.”

  “In here?” They stopped moving.

  “So I thought I ought to come down here, take a look at the place.”

  “The Lord thanks you for your diligence, officer.”

  The footsteps resumed.

  “I’m putting that chain back on the door and getting new locks tomorrow. The Lord doesn’t favor fools.”

  “Sometimes I wonder about that,” Monroe said.

  Their shoes clicked against the concrete beside the stage. The exit door swished open, closed. The door into the alley clanked open. I got to my feet. Tom stood up in front of me. From the alley came the sound of the chain rattling through the brackets. I exhaled and began brushing invisible dust off my clothes.

  “That was interesting,” Tom said. “Monroe turns out to be a good cop. Do you suppose all three of them will come down?”

  “I hope the two don’t show up together.”

  “Which one do you think is Fee?”

  I saw Ross McCandless’s seamy face and empty eyes leaning toward my hospital bed. “No hunches,” I said.

  “I have one.” Tom stretched out his arms and arched his back. He swatted his jacket and brushed off his knees. Then he walked back to the end of the aisle and sat down in his old seat.

  “Which one?”

  “You,” he said, and laughed.

  15

  WHAT IS FEE GOING TO THINK when he comes back and finds the chain back in place?”

  “Oh, that’s going to be helpful.” Tom turned around and placed his arm on the back of his seat. “He’ll think the reverend came here after someone reported an attempted break-in, checked the place out, and locked it up again. When he works that out, he’ll be even more confident that he got here first. So he won’t be paying as much attention—he’ll be careless.”

  We settled back down to wait.

  16

  IDRIFTED INTO A STRAINED HALF-SLEEP. My eyes were open, and I did not dream, but I began hearing voices speaking just above the level of audibility. Someone described seeing a blue-eyed baby cut in half beside a dead fire. A man said that it would catch up with me in a day or two. I could see everything, another said, I saw my dead friend and his team leader standing beneath a giant tree. They told me to go on, go on, go on.

  Dark patterns unfolded and moved in the air before me, shifting as the voices rose and fell.

  Someone spoke about a rattling chain. The rattle of the chain was important. Couldn’t I hear that the chain was rattling?

  The voices whisked backward into the psychic vault from which they had come, the darkness stood still, and I sat upright, hearing the chain clanking over the brackets on the alley doors. A great deal of time had passed, an hour at least, perhaps two, while I drifted along the border between sleep and wakefulness. My mouth felt dry and my eyes could not focus.

  “Were you asleep?” Tom asked.

  “Will you be quiet?” I said.

  The tail of the chain struck one of the brackets as it passed through, making a tinny clink!

  “Here we go,” Tom said.

  We moved out of our seats and listened to the key sliding into the lock. The alley door opened and shut, and a man moved two steps past the alley door. Harsh light flew around the frame, and then shrank to a yellow glimmer visible only at a point about waist-high on the frame. It disappeared as the footsteps ticked away into silence.

  Tom and I looked at each other.

  “Should we wait for him to come back up?”

  “Aren’t you curious about what he’s doing down there?”

  I looked at him.

  “I’d like to know what it is.”

  “He’d hear us on the stairs.”

  “Not if we use the office stairs—the wooden ones. They’re so old they’re soft. Remember, he’s convinced no one else is here.” Tom stood up and began moving quickly and soundlessly up the aisle.

  I almost ran into him at the door. He was sitting on the armrest of the last seat, bending over. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking off my shoes.”

  I knelt to unlace my Reeboks.

  17

  WE MOVED OUT into the lobby and padded past the church equipment to the office door. I whispered something about his being able to hear us unlocking it.

  “I can take care of that.” Tom took out the length of ribbed cloth and, after finding the key that fit the office door, pulled out a short length of soft black cloth, about an eighth of an inch wide. With it came a small, narrow metal rod that looked like a toothpick. “You can only use these once, and sooner or later it fouls up the lock, but do we care?”

  He knelt in front of the door, wet the tip of the cloth in his mouth, and patiently worked a small portion into the keyhole. He prodded it into place with the metal toothpick, then nudged the key in beside it. Most of the rest of the cloth moved into the slot along with the lock. When he turned the key, the last of the cloth disappeared. The lock made no sound at all.

  Tom motioned for me to squat beside him. He leaned toward me to whisper. “We’re going to have to pick up the rack and set it down again. I’ll go through the door first. Count to a hundred, and listen to what’s going on down there. If nothing happens, come down. Don’t worry about where I am.”

  “You want me to sneak up on him?”

  “Play it by ear.”

  “What if he sees me?”

  “Eventually, he has to see you,” Tom said. “Don’t tell him that you made the call, and don’t let him see your gun. Give him some stuff about Elvee—say you couldn’t stay away, say you were going to call him as soon as you found Fontaine’s notes.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  “Depends on what he does. Just remember what you know about him.”

  What I knew about him?

  Without giving me time to ask what he meant, Tom stood up and slid the door toward us and went inside. In utter darkness, we moved side by side toward the rack. My outstretched hands touched smooth fabric, and I felt my way up the robe to the top of the rack. Tom and I worked our way to opposite ends, and he whispered, “Now,” so softly that the command nearly vaporized before it reached me. I lifted the pole on my side, and the entire heavy rack went two inches off the floor. The rack moved with me when I stepped sideways, and then continued to move. I took another sideways step. Tom and I gingerly lowered the rack, and its wheels noiselessly met the floor.

  I heard his feet whisper around the rack and groped toward the wall and the basement door. Suddenly, what we were doing seemed as absurd as the attempt John Ransom and I had made to capture Paul Fontaine. It was impossible to go downstairs without making noise. I rubbed sweat off my forehead. A few cautious steps took me to the wall, and I reached out for Tom, imagining him easing open the plywood door. My hand touched nothing but empty air. I moved sideways, still reaching out. I took another step. My hand brushed the edge of the door, and I nearly banged it against the wall. I lowered myself back down into a squat, still trying to find Tom. He wasn’t there. I leaned forward and poked my head over the top of the staircase. In the very faint illumination provided by a flashlight at the other end of the basement, a dark shape glided away from the bottom of the stairs and disappeared.

  I pushed myself slowly upright, moving with exaggerated care to keep my knees from popping, and started counting to one hundred.

  18

  IWANTED TO KEEP GOING until I got to two hundred, maybe two thousand, but I made myself walk through the opening and set my right foot down on the first step. Tom had been right—the wood was so soft it was almost furry. I felt the grain through my sock. I grabbed the rail and went down the next two steps without making any noise at all. I padded down another three steps, then another two, and my head finally passed beneath the level of the floor.

  Someone was sweeping the beam of a flashlig
ht over the floor behind the furnace. I saw the circle of light leap to the right of the big furnace and then travel slowly along the floor until it disappeared behind it. A few seconds later, it reappeared to the left of the furnace and moved another five or six feet toward the wall of the dressing rooms. Then it skittered over the floor, looping and circling on the cement until it steadied again a few feet further from the furnace and began making another long steady sweep across the floor. Fee was standing behind the furnace and facing in my direction, looking for something. I thought I knew what it was.

  I moved slowly down the last five steps. He would not be able to see me even if he moved around the furnace—all he could see was what fell into the beam of his flashlight. I came down onto the cement and began walking carefully toward the place where I remembered seeing the brick pillar. The man with the flashlight backed up and swung the light wildly over the floor between the furnace and the dressing rooms. I stopped moving, and the elongated circle of light swooped over the furnace, throwing the pipes and conduits above it into stark black silhouette, streaked across the wall near the stairs, and came to rest on the floor to the left of the furnace. The man backed up again, and I took a few more quiet steps toward the invisible pillar.

  Judging from the direction he’d been moving, Tom must have been hidden in the rear of the basement, probably behind the crate of marquee letters. He would wait until I identified the man with the flashlight before he made his move. Maybe he would wait until Fee said something incriminating. I hoped he wouldn’t wait until Fee started shooting.

  Another quiet step, then another, took me to the spot where I had seen the pillar. I felt the air in front of me, but not the pillar. I took a third step forward. The beam of light was making big sideways sweeps over the territory to the right of the furnace as Fee began a more systematic search. I moved sideways without bothering to check the air with my hands and bumped right into the pillar. It didn’t make any more noise than an auto wreck. The light stopped moving. I pressed up against the side of the pillar, drenched in sweat.

  “Who’s there?” The voice sounded much calmer than I was.

  I felt around for the back of the pillar and stepped behind it, hoping that Tom Pasmore would come forward out of the darkness.

  “Who are you?”

  I put my hand on the little holster clipped to my belt. The man with the flashlight moved to the left side of the furnace—the beam of light flared across the basement and flattened on the back wall. His footsteps clicked against the cement. Then he stopped moving and turned off his light.

  “I’m a police officer,” he said. “I am armed and prepared to shoot. I want to know who you are and what you’re doing here.”

  This wasn’t right—he wasn’t acting guilty. Fee would have switched off his flashlight the instant he realized that someone else was in the basement. He wasn’t even protecting himself by moving away.

  “Say something.”

  In my panic, I couldn’t remember the voices of either of the two men who could have been Fee Bandolier. Rough chunks of mortar pushed into my side. Wishing that I was anywhere else but in this basement, I grasped a thick chunk of mortar, broke it off the pillar, and tossed it toward the stairs. The mortar hit the concrete and shattered.

  “Oh, come on,” the man said. “That only works in the movies.”

  He took another step, but I could not tell where.

  “Let me tell you what’s going on,” he said. “You came here to meet a man who knew all about you—he called a bunch of detectives, me, Monroe, and I don’t know who else. Either he called you, too, or you heard people talking about it.” He was moving noiselessly around as he talked, his voice seeming to come from first one side of the furnace, then, in what seemed an impossibly short time, the other. He sounded perfectly calm.

  “You know me—you can take a shot at me, but you won’t hit me. And then I’ll take you down.”

  There was a long silence, and then he spoke again, from somewhere off to the right. “What troubles me about this is, you’re not acting like a cop. Who the hell are you?”

  I wasn’t acting like a cop, and he wasn’t acting like Fee Bandolier.

  The pillar was still between us. It was a good, sturdy pillar. Not a bullet in the world could go through it. And if he didn’t shoot, we were in the basement for the same reason.

  “Sergeant Hogan?” I said.

  Sudden light flooded over me from somewhere behind my right shoulder, and my shadow loomed against the wall like a giant. My stomach plummeted toward my knees, but no gunshot resounded, neither from the man with the light nor from Tom. I wanted to duck around the pillar, but I made myself turn into the glare.

  “I thought we got rid of you, Underhill.” He sounded angry and amused at the same time. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  “You surprised me,” I said.

  “It’s mutual.” He turned the light off me. I put my hand back on the holster as the beam swept across the floor toward the source of his voice. The circle of the beam diminished as it sped toward him and then flattened out against his chest and jumped up to illuminate Michael Hogan’s handsome, weathered face. He blinked under the light, and then turned the flashlight back on me, aiming the beam at my chest, so that I could see. “What are you doing here?”

  “The same as you,” I said. “I wanted to see if I could find the papers that used to be in those boxes. When I saw that they were gone, I was looking for anything that might have fallen out.”

  He sighed, and the beam dropped to the floor. “How did you know where the papers would be?”

  “Just before Paul Fontaine died, he said ‘Bell.’ It took me a couple of weeks to understand that he was trying to say Beldame Oriental.”

  “You’re the lunatic who made the calls?”

  “I didn’t know anything about that until you told me,” I said. “What did he say?”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “John Ransom’s father owned a hotel. He has lots of skeleton keys.”

  “Then how did you manage to reattach the chain from the inside?”

  “I came in the front,” I said. “About fifteen minutes before you showed up. I didn’t think I’d see anyone else in here.”

  “You were down here when I came in?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I guess I’m lucky you didn’t shoot me.”

  “With what?”

  “Well, you picked a hell of a night to go exploring.”

  “I guess you’re not Fielding Bandolier, are you?”

  The light jumped into my face again, blinding me. I held up my hand to block it. “Did Ransom come down here with you? Is he somewhere in the theater?”

  A jolt of terror went through me like cold electricity. I kept my hand up over my face. “I’m alone. I don’t think John cares anymore.”

  “Okay.” The light dropped to my waist, and I lowered my hand. “I’m sick of the subject of Fielding Bandolier. I don’t want to hear anything more about him, from you or anyone else.”

  “So you knew about the theater because of the telephone call?”

  “Knew what?” He waited, and when I did not answer, he said, “The caller asked me to meet him here. I thought that was unusual, to put it mildly, so I checked up on the ownership. I gather you’ve heard of Elvee Holdings.”

  “Didn’t you get confirmation from Hubbel, the head of Bachelor’s old draft board?”

  “We never talked to Hubbel. McCandless said he was going to organize that, and then he called it off.”

  “McCandless,” I said.

  Hogan said nothing. I heard his feet move as he turned around. The oval of light swung away from me and traveled across the floor toward the stairs. “I don’t know why we’re standing here in the dark,” he said. “There’s a switch on the wall next to the stairs. Go over there and turn on the lights, will you?”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Do it.”
>
  He moved the beam to just in front of me and lit my way to the bottom of the stairs. I walked along the moving oval on the floor, wondering where Tom had hidden himself. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, Hogan aimed the light at the switch.

  “What if someone else shows up?”

  “Who would that be?”

  I took a breath. “Ross McCandless. He’s a murderer. And if someone called a bunch of detectives, trying to lure the right one here, then—even if he already moved his papers—he has to come back to kill the person who called him.”

  “Turn on the lights,” Hogan said.

  I reached for the switch and flipped it up.

  19

  BARE LIGHT BULBS dangling over the bottom of the stairs, near the furnace, somewhere near the crate of letters, and far at the front of the basement, threw out enough light to stab into my eyes. The entire basement came into being around us, larger and dirtier than I had expected. It was brightly lit around the hanging bulbs, shadowy in the corners, but entirely visible. Matted spiderwebs hung from the cords of the light bulbs. Tom Pasmore was nowhere in sight.

  In a gray suit and a black T-shirt, Michael Hogan stood about twelve feet away, looking at me dryly. A long black flashlight tilted like a club in his right hand. He moved his thumb and switched it off. “Now that we can see, let’s check out the place where he put the boxes.” Hogan wheeled around and strode past the pillar and the furnace.

  I walked across the basement and came around the side of the furnace. Hogan was standing near the boxes, staring down at the cement floor. Then he noticed my feet. “What did you do with your shoes?”

  “Left them upstairs.”

  “Humph. Junior G-man.”

  The empty boxes lay on the dusty floor. Hogan scanned the area between the furnace and the wall to our right, then the long stretch of floor between the furnace and the dressing rooms. There were no crumpled pieces of paper. I looked back at the dressing rooms. The door of the first, the one farthest from us, hung slightly ajar.