The Hotel Neversink

by Adam O'Fallon Price

  She appeared outside his office one morning at ten, knocked on his door with its plaque reading Head of Hotel Security, which implied there were other security officers for him to be the head of, an untrue but handy suggestion at times when he was trying to impress upon someone—a budding young thief earlier in the week, for example—the ubiquity of people like him, those who guard against malfeasance and immorality. But the redheaded lady didn’t seem impressed. Watching her settle into the chair across from his desk, Mr. Javits put his detective skills, such as they were, to use on her, trying to place who she was and where she was coming from. She was around his age, fiftyish, with hair like copper filament. She wore sandals, shapeless jeans, and a floral blouse with the top button open, exposing an expanse of flat, freckled clavicle. She was neither attractive nor unattractive, though she had a pleasant demeanor—had been nothing but pleasant when she’d set up this meeting with him the day before, catching him down in the dining hall just as he stupidly held a hunk of sopping bread over his bowl of matzoh ball soup—but from the second she’d opened her mouth, Mr. Javits had hated her, and he continued to hate her as she balanced a legal notepad on her knee like a journalist ready to take notes on a hot story. Was she a journalist? A writer? No. She seemed like a local housewife with too much time on her hands. So why had he agreed to this? Because whoever she was, she claimed to have information about the boy’s disappearance, not to mention a subtle natural facility at making him feel somehow culpable, a feeling that unpleasantly recalled the meeting with the boy’s mother all those years earlier. She sat smiling across from him, judging him, he felt, and he produced a hideous smile in return, like the skin of his face was being pulled taut by invisible hands behind him. What can I do for you, Lucy, he said, and she said, well Saul—if you don’t mind me calling you Saul (he did)—I think I have some information that might be useful about the Schoenberg boy, and the girl. Okay, he said. Well, she said, I think I might know who it is. Who who is, he said. The killer, she said, and he looked at her. She seemed to have been expecting him to get up, dance a little jig, vault over the table in his excitement, and he could see his reaction disappointed her. I’m sorry, he said, but I don’t understand why you’re telling me; this seems like a police matter. And she said, oh, I’ve tried, believe me, I’ve tried. They aren’t interested. They think I’m a nut! Really, said Mr. Javits, leaning back in his chair with some pleasure. Yes, she said, I told them I could lead them right to the killer—to his house!—and they said they’d get in touch if they needed the information. I didn’t know who else to come to, so I came here, hoping you would listen. He adopted a posture that suggested listening, and Lucy proceeded to tell him her story, how she’d grown up around here, heard about the abductions like everyone else, lived in a kind of fear, under a shadow like everyone else. Worried about her boy every day like everyone else around here, but he was fine, thank God, up in college at Geneseo. Then, two years ago, her husband died suddenly—Mr. Javits said he was sorry, and she said thank you—and she’d had to move into a smaller house. In her new neighborhood, she began noticing a man who lived a few doors down the street. Tall, very thin, black hair and eyes. Moved like he was always worried about someone sneaking up behind him. Furtive is the word, she said. I didn’t think much of it, just a weird person (yes, a weirdo like you, thought Mr. Javits), but then I started to really pick up on his movements. Maybe it was just because I stayed up nights, having no husband and no job, but I could see him walking down the street, sometimes very, very late—two, three, four in the morning. I would watch from my window in the middle of the night, and sometimes I would see him coming, like a shadow, almost darker than the real shadows. And I saw that not only would he be out late—which I know is not a crime, maybe a little strange, but again, I’m a night owl myself—but he would look in windows. He would sometimes stop and look back to make sure no one was behind him, then walk through a yard and appear on the other side. Once he went behind mine. Your house, said Mr. Javits. Yes, the woman said, he came through my yard to the side, and I grabbed the shotgun from the cabinet where I keep it. I went downstairs and peeked into the bedroom, and he was standing out there, as sure as I’m sitting here. He was looking for something, for someone, I could feel it. I don’t mind telling you it chilled my blood, Saul. I can imagine that would, yes, he said. Yes, and so I called the police and they said they’d send someone out, only they never did. I didn’t sleep that night or the next. And I became a little, I admit, obsessed. I asked my neighbors about him, and they shrugged, saying, oh, Mr. Andrews, he keeps to himself, been a fine neighbor as long as they could remember, though a little odd, big on his nighttime rambles. So one time I followed Mr. Andrews. I saw him going out earlier in the night, and went out behind him, wearing black. I’d planned it. He went down the street, me about two blocks behind. I thought he was headed into town, but when he got to the park he cut through it, and from there into the woods. Well, needless to say, that was as far as I followed. I stood behind the jungle gym, shivering. Into the woods at ten at night! Who does that? So I started doing research, and I discovered some very interesting things. I have a theory— But Mr. Javits had tuned out, thinking how much she reminded him of his mother. They looked nothing alike, but there was something similar in their manner, a brittleness that put him on edge. She would be insulted if he didn’t take her seriously, act on her theory, as though he’d asked her to speak with him in the first place. He was so tired of theories. Everyone with a theory! he thought, everyone suspicious, going around worrying about everyone else—this was the true shame of these disappearances, how they turned neighbors and coworkers against each other. He leaned back in his chair, nodding while she spoke, looking out his window at the tree next to it. A large bird sat on the nearest branch, and as Mr. Javits nodded and hmmmed, he tried to figure out what kind it was. Black and orange—an oriole? It was more yellow than orange, though, and speckled, and anyway, he’d never heard of an oriole coming up this far north, not that he was an expert, by any means. A goldfinch? He’d never been too much for birds—Hedda was much more of a birder than he was—but as he’d gotten a little older and started to slow down a little, he’d found himself increasingly drawn to them. Lucy herself looked like a bird to him, an awkward, skinny bird with fiery plumage muted by age, the color washed out in its final molting. She was saying something to him, he realized, asking a question, and he said, sorry, what? And she said, I was just wondering if you had a list of who you or the police had questioned. Questioned, he said. About this Alice girl or the Schoenberg boy way back when—you would have conducted interviews presumably, she said, and he tried to remember if he had. He’d certainly talked to people. Asked around, certainly he had. And he’d cooperated with the police investigation, although he couldn’t certainly say who they’d spoken with or brought in, if they had. Certainly—certainly!—he’d lost sleep for weeks over the missing boy, had prayed for his safe return, for all the good it did: none, clearly. He’d never really prayed for anything before, but he remembered one overcast night when he’d wandered out onto the new golf course—the fourteenth hole, with the sloping green—and he’d spoken out loud, saying Ha Shem, please make the boy safe, and when he said it, he hadn’t been sure whether he was talking about the Schoenberg boy, or Charlie, or himself. But interviews? He wasn’t sure if he’d done anything as formal as that. And then he’d missed something else, and she said, oh sorry, I was just asking if you’d mind coming over and having a look? At some of the information I’ve put together. Since the police won’t look at it. Mr. Javits said honestly, Lucy, if the police aren’t interested, I’m not sure what I can do. She stiffened in her chair and he felt, for a moment, that he was being interviewed, interrogated. Counting on her fingers, she said, Saul, you’re someone who’s lived in the area for a long time, you’re familiar with investigative techniques, you work where two of the crimes have occurred, and you have a relationship with the police. I need your help. She wrote her address
on a yellow legal sheet, tore it off and handed it to him across the desk. And he said, sure, okay, he’d be happy to come talk, and was she available mornings?