by Tom DeLonge
She pretended her phone was vibrating, put it to her ear with a vague wave of apology at the guard, and mouthed “Thank you.” As she jabbered randomly into the phone, she walked from the gate back to the car, conscious of the way the guard watched her go.
SHE DROVE A FEW HUNDRED YARDS AND STOPPED TO THINK. Stern had been elderly, frail even. The Hollows, for all its stateliness, had an institutional feel.
Retirement home?
Maybe. But then why deny he lived there? She Googled local food service providers, ignoring the party caterers, and made a series of calls. In each case, she tried to sound distracted, manic, and a little panicky, calling herself Ashley and asking if they had already processed their order for The Hollows. Two came up empty, but at the third, a company called Newman’s, a man’s voice, slightly exasperated, said, “Not yet. Why, what is it this time?”
“Need to make some changes to Mr. Stern’s order,” she tried, eyes closed, feeling her way through the deception.
“Hold on,” said the voice. There was a sigh, some muffled movement and voices away from the phone, and then he was back. “Stern, you said?”
“That’s right. Read me what you have there.”
“Standard continental breakfast, pastrami club lunch with fruit cocktail, and chicken piccata with banana cream pudding dinner.”
“Yes,” said Timika, thinking hard.
“So? What needs changing?” asked the caterer, his irritation mounting. “You can’t keep doing this, you know. Not without more notice.”
“They’re old people,” Timika ventured. “We have to keep a close eye on their dietary needs.”
“So what does he want?”
“Fish,” said Timika.
“Type?” prompted the caterer, still more exasperated.
“Well, what’s available?”
Another sigh.
“You know the drill. Long as you guys keep paying, we’ll find it, catfish to swordfish and anything in between.”
Timika frowned. The Hollows was turning out to be a very strange place.
“Salmon,” she said. “Fillet. Poached.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Hold on,” she said, stalling. “Our system is down. Can you run down what else is coming today and for whom?”
“Just the two at The Hollows or all eight of them?”
Timika hesitated.
All eight of them?
“Better give me the lot,” she said, pen and notebook poised.
More grumbling and sighing, followed by a list of names and some pretty fancy dinner entrées: filet mignon with goat cheese and pine nuts; Vienna schnitzel, wild mushroom risotto, red snapper and snow peas. With the exception of the only woman on the list who also lived at The Hollows, the other diners lived elsewhere, all separately by the sound of it, but he only mentioned one actual location as he absently worked through the list: a place called The Silver Birches. Timika wrote the names down, thanked the caterer for his time and patience—not that he’d shown much—and hung up. She reviewed the names.
Horace Evers.
Stephen Albitz.
Katarina Lundergrass—the other Hollows resident.
Albert Billen.
Frederick Kaas.
Karl Jurgens.
Max Stiegler.
Eight elderly residents scattered across at least two rest homes being catered by a special service. It was odd. She called Marvin.
He answered quickly. She had to speak over his anxious questions.
“I want you to see what you can find about these people. Anything that might group them together,” she said. “Also this place: The Hollows, in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. And another called The Silver Birches. Also near here.” She asked if he’d turned up anything on Stern.
“Next to nothing,” said Marvin. “It’s weird, you know? I see a statement of citizenship from 1945, but after that, nothing. Like he’s been wiped from the records, you know? I’ll keep poking around.”
Timika considered the list of names again, then redialed the caterer.
“Ashley again from The Hollows,” she said. “What time will you be making your delivery today?”
“Usual time. Four,” said the caterer.
“You wouldn’t mind picking me up on the way, would you?” she asked. “I’m having car trouble.”
Another sigh.
“Where?” asked the caterer.
SHE DROVE TO A COFFEE SHOP, ACROSS THE STREET FROM A bridal showroom full of lace and fake plastic lilies, yellowing in the sunlit window. She wondered if Jerzy Stern had ever been married. She wasn’t sure why, but she doubted it. She was on her second coffee when the burner phone rang. Good old Marvin.
“So this is really weird,” he said. “Those people you told me about? All the same as Stern. Citizenship records in the late 1940s and early ’50s, but nothing else.”
“What about The Hollows and The Silver Birches?”
“Retirement homes. No apparent connection.”
Timika’s heart sank.
“Something interesting with your caterer though.”
“What?”
“Mr. Newman was trained in Paris and Florence but then joined the military. Lived for a few years in Las Vegas, but it’s not clear where he worked. He’s been out here ten years. His catering company is owned by something called Firelight Holdings, but I can’t find any other properties, bank records or tax statements under that name.”
“So it’s a shell company.”
“A well-hidden one.”
Timika drummed her fingers on the edge of the table. “You’re thinking government,” she said.
“Not sure who else could bury tax info so completely,” said Marvin. “And it looks like The Hollows was built on land that was bought in the late 1940s by what was then called The National Military Establishment.”
“The DOD.”
“Right. I’m going to pull some strings and see if I can get a peek inside their more covert files.”
“Remember what I said, Marvin,” Timika cautioned. “Discreet, yeah?”
“Call me Bond. James Bond.”
“You mean you’ll show up in a tux and a sports car that shoots people out the roof? Let’s keep it under the radar, okay?”
“Understood,” said Marvin.
TIMIKA PARKED AROUND THE CORNER FROM THE HOLLOWS, then walked a mile back toward town to the junction where she had arranged to meet Newman’s van. The driver was middle-aged but silver-haired, white, and grumpy as expected. Timika opted for slightly ditzy bubbliness and chatty gratitude, beating away the caterer’s suspicions—if he had any—with a flurry of talk that wasn’t so much small as microscopic.
“I’ve been at that mechanic three times in a year, if you can believe that,” she burbled. “The one with the sign outside? They did my friend Carlson’s Camry when he got rear-ended by some hick from Kentucky. It was really too bad ’cause the car had to be completely repainted and the body shop couldn’t match the blue exactly. It was like a teal kind of color with a bit of turquoise. Capri blue, they called it. That’s an island near Italy. Or Greece, maybe. I’m not sure. I’ve never been to Europe. Have you?”
“No,” he said, which Timika thought was interesting.
“How come you don’t cook for the other residents? Just these two?”
“Different contract.”
“But you deliver to other people at other places, too?”
“Yes.”
“How come you don’t just deliver to one place but, you know, feed everyone there?”
He was getting annoyed now. “Not everyone can afford what I make,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to concentrate.”
And that was that.
Timika tried a few questions that weren’t as leading, but the driver gave her nothing more than grunts and monosyllabic replies, his eyes on the road, but he was bored rather than suspicious, and she’d take that. As they pulled up to The Hollows, Timika dropped her face to her pu
rse and began fiddling with her compact conspicuously. It was the same guard on duty who had turned her away before.
Timika’s heart raced. She had used deception to investigate stories before, but this felt different and entirely more dangerous. Newman lowered his window and took a clipboard from the guard with a nod of greeting. As he signed, Timika kept her face down, saying nothing.
Then the window closed and they were moving. She waited until the gate receded in the side view mirror before looking up. The house they were approaching was a sprawling mansion, windows set in olive-colored stone stained with age, though the result looked stately rather than dilapidated. The van rumbled on the gravel approach, swung around the front and slowed into a parking lot screened from the house by trimmed shrubs and a picket of tight conifers. Newman slid out, muttering, “Give me a hand with the food, will you?” without pausing to hear her response.
He dragged the back doors of the van open, pulled out a ramp, and released the clamps on a pair of hostess trolleys with racks of covered dishes.
“Take one of these to the kitchen,” he said.
Timika didn’t object as she moved towards the back door, shoving the trolley’s reluctant casters across the gravel with difficulty. The door was locked. She was further dismayed to see a keypad with a red light next to the handle. She could sense Newman behind her, watching.
She tapped a series of random numbers into the keypad and tried the door, feigning puzzlement when it didn’t open.
“Huh,” she said, trying the numbers again. “That’s weird.”
Newman sighed, stomped across the gravel and reached past her irritably to the keypad.
“There,” he said, as the light turned green.
“Sorry,” said Timika, trying to look embarrassed. “I don’t usually use this door.”
“Well excuse me for bringing you to the tradesman’s entrance,” snapped Newman.
“Sorry,” said Timika, meaning it this time. “I didn’t mean …”
“It’s fine. Just get that food inside, please.”
She did so, pushing the trolley down a carpeted hallway flanked by doors, trying to guess which one was the kitchen.
“There!” said Newman, sensing her uncertainty and nodding towards one of the doors on the right. “Jesus!”
She managed not to turn on him, resolving to stay in character another minute or two. She gave him an inquiring look as he pushed past her to the end of the kitchen, where she saw a large commercial refrigerator. She dithered, checking her watch as if there was somewhere she needed to be, and he gave up.
“Go,” he said, loading the fridge. “Do whatever it is you do.”
She thanked him for the ride, but he just grunted.
In the hallway, she faced the same uncertainty, unclear where she was going or what she was trying to accomplish. She didn’t think the guard at the gate had noticed her, but she couldn’t be sure. If he’d decided to let her in, only to corner her until law enforcement arrived, she wouldn’t have long. She moved down the hallway, listening for sounds beyond the clatter of Newman in the kitchen. She thought she caught a strain of music coming from a door at the far end of the corridor. Old-fashioned music. Big band. Pre-swing. She tried the door.
It opened onto a kind of conservatory, filled with lounge chairs, low tables and French windows looking out onto a well-manicured garden surrounded by high hedges. Half a dozen people sat around the room, some sleeping, two drinking coffee and chatting, one playing half a game of chess, and one—the only woman—sitting alone with a book in her hands. All were old, as old as Jerzy, possibly older. One of the men was asleep in a wheelchair.
It was eerily quiet, and yet no one noticed her entrance. The old woman was not turning the pages of her book, her gaze fixed on a point in space at a middle distance, as if she were seeing nothing at all.
Timika made for her, trying to recall the one female name on the list she’d given Marvin.
“Hi,” she said, smiling. “Katarina, right?”
The old woman started, then sat back while her eyes focused.
“Who are you?” she demanded. There was a hauteur in her manner. Her eyes looked pink and swollen.
“I’m Ashley,” Timika said. “I’ve come from New York.”
“New York?” said the woman. “What are you doing here?”
Good question, Timika thought.
“I’m trying to find a friend of mine,” she said, improvising. “Jerzy Stern. You didn’t know him, did you?”
“I know him,” she said, but warily.
Timika glanced around the room. Only the chess player seemed to be paying her any attention.
“Do you mind if I sit with you for a moment?” she asked.
“It’s a free country,” said the elderly woman, adjusting her shawl. “Or so we like to think.”
Timika sat and leaned in. The woman smelled like lavender.
“What is this place?” she began, trying to make the question sound casual, an ice-breaker.
“Death’s waiting room,” said the woman. “There used to be twice as many of us as there are now.”
“And who are you all?” Timika ventured. Someone could walk in at any minute. “And these others,” she added, producing the list of names she had written down. “Where are they? What connects you?”
The old woman’s eyes tightened shrewdly.
“I don’t think I should be talking to you,” she said. “Are you supposed to be here?”
Another reckless chance.
“No,” said Timika. “I’m not.”
“Then you should probably go. While you still can.”
It wasn’t a threat. More like a warning. Her manner was weary and sad.
“You were a friend of Jerzy’s, weren’t you?” said Timika.
Katarina’s eyelids flickered and she turned momentarily away. When she looked back, her eyes were bright, but when she opened her mouth to speak, her jaw quivered, so that she shut it hurriedly and gave a single nod instead.
“I thought so,” said Timika, kindly.
“Are you?” the old woman managed. “A friend of Jerzy’s, I mean.”
“Yes,” said Timika with sudden certainty. “He entrusted me with something he wanted me to do. But it’s about the past, and there’s a lot I don’t understand.”
Katarina nodded again, slowly, thoughtfully.
“We can’t talk about that,” she said, with a wistful smile, adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “Against the rules.”
“Right,” said Timika. “I see. Tell me about Jerzy.”
She smiled then, a sudden unexpected smile, like clouds parting over a meadow of wildflowers.
“He was a beautiful boy,” she said. “Long ago. Before we came here. I could look into his eyes for hours. Even now …”
She faltered and Timika felt an unexpected panic, a fearful wave of grief rushing in on her heart as she took in the woman’s face, the depth of feeling in her bloodshot eyes.
“You’ve known him a long time,” said Timika.
Katarina nodded.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” she said. “Dead. They said he was just going away for a while, but I knew. I felt it.”
Timika looked down, humbled by the old woman’s grief. “I’m so sorry,” she breathed.
Katarina Lundergrass clenched her teeth together and patted Timika’s hand with her own, as if it were the younger woman who needed comforting.
“Who are you all?” Timika asked again.
“The best fed inmates on the continent,” said the older woman, wiping her eyes.
“You are prisoners here?” Timika said, wondering if the woman was entirely in her right mind. Dion’s grandmother had developed a dementia that manifested as a persecution complex.
“Jerzy said so. He said that it looked like a resort, so we would forget we couldn’t leave.”
“Why not?”
Katarina leaned in suddenly so that her face was inches from Timika’s.
“Some things are best kept in the shadows,” she said. “People think they want to know everything these days. But they don’t. They really don’t. So we stay here.”
“Who’s we?”
Katarina glanced around the room, her eyes lingering on each of the old men in turn.
“Paper people,” she said. “Hidden away in a drawer where no one can read us.”
The phrase raised the hair on the back of Timika’s neck, and somewhere deep in the dark parts of her memory, something chimed, though she could not say what. She brushed her unease aside.
“What line of work were you in, Katarina?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Jerzy did. He gave me a book.”
The old woman looked at her, and Timika felt she’d overplayed her hand.
“I think you should go,” said Katarina.
“Just tell me a little more about …”
“No,” she responded forcefully. “I mean it. I really think you should go.”
She nodded towards the French doors, where two men in suits and overcoats were approaching the house from across the lawn. Timika got unsteadily to her feet.
“I could give you my phone number …” she began, but the old woman shook her head vigorously.
“Go.”
“Thank you,” said Timika, taking her hand on impulse and squeezing it gently, feeling the paper-thin softness of the other woman’s skin, the bones and raised veins.
“We have an outing tomorrow,” said the old woman, apparently changing her mind. “Locust Lake State Park. There’s a little Presbyterian church just off the road as you drive north from town. Be there at eleven.”
For a moment, Timika stared at her, taken aback, but then Katarina was brushing her away. The two men had almost reached the house.
She slipped out the way she’d come in, back down the hallway toward the kitchen and out the door into the gravel lot, but instead of walking back along the drive to the main gate, she cut right, forcing her way through the tight conifers and out onto a concrete path skirting a golf course.
She broke into an unsteady run, keeping to the tree line and moving away from the building and into the woods out of bounds from the fairway. She heard a door slam, back at the house, and the sound of raised voices, male. She took a few more hurried steps into the densest part of the underbrush and dropped to the cold, damp earth in the partial cover of a wild, shapeless magnolia.