The Upright Man

by Michael Marshall

  She was making the stairs’ halfway turn when she heard a noise above. She looked up, ready to smile, assuming it was Burt come to do something in the well. There was no one there.

  Odd. The sound couldn’t be from below, because she could see the door to floor five. She peered over the rail. No movement down there either.

  Whatever. Hotels made noises. Probably one of the cleaning staff coming on duty. Though—she checked her watch—at quarter after three, that couldn’t be right.

  She opened the door at the bottom of the flight, half-expecting to see Burt clanking by and thinking maybe she’d say something to him. Something friendly, to show there would be no ageism, racism, or hierarchy-dictated interaction on her watch.

  The corridor was empty.

  Oh, well. Burt would never know what he missed.

  Floor five was slow going too. A few toast and coffees, but—aha. Eggs, sausage, bacon, extra sausage (?), hash browns, oats, fruit, coffee, and tea for what looks like, what, four? And a continental breakfast with toast. And an English muffin, probably, though the mark was hard to interpret. Could be more toast. Or bacon. And an orange juice. Delivered at seven-thirty.

  Katelyn smiled: that would be the drunk tourists. She pulled a pen out of her jacket pocket and made a few alterations, judiciously reducing their order to something that wouldn’t scare the hell out of them when it arrived. She also nudged the delivery time back to seven forty-five. They’d thank her for it.

  She walked on. More toast, more eggs. She tried to remember the last time she’d been on vacation herself. It had been a while, that was for sure, certainly back before her parents died, which made it five years. Funny what you remembered. Snapshots of views. A favorite coffee place, reading a trashy novel. Some trinket lusted over, bought, now lying forgotten in a drawer. Vacation sex. Boys now men, just as she was now presumably a woman. Anyone over forty who still thought of herself as a girl was kidding herself, whatever was implied by magazines that funded themselves through ads for antiwrinkle creams.

  There was the sound of a door opening.

  She turned. “Burt?”

  No reply. She’d kept her voice low—nobody wanted waking at this time—but he’d have heard, and responded.

  A guest, maybe? She added the tourists’ menu to the bottom of her stack and walked back the way she’d come. When she passed the door to the stairs she noticed it was open. Not wide, but propped on the latch.

  She hadn’t left it that way. You had to close it. Fire regulations were strict on the subject, and there was a sign that said so very clearly. Burt knew about them too. Strange time to be using the stairs, in any event.

  She pushed the door farther ajar, and said, “Hello?”

  The sound echoed down the staircase, but didn’t seem to meet anyone either going down or coming back. Just another sound in her own head. Except . . .

  She turned quickly.

  The corridor was empty behind her. Of course it was. But it felt like it hadn’t been so a moment before.

  That was kind of creepy. Burt wouldn’t do that. A late guest wouldn’t do it either.

  There was only one way someone could have gone. Katelyn walked quickly back across the foyer, passing the elevators. A glance at the floor indicator showed they were all down in the basement. Which left . . .

  She looked down the other corridor.

  Empty. Pairs of doors, leading away. Silent, as it should be.

  But then she heard a click. Very quiet, from down at the end.

  So probably a very late guest. Came up the stairs for reasons of his or her own, let themselves into their room. Elevator phobic. That’s it. No big drama.

  Except . . . something didn’t feel right.

  The guest had to pass right behind her—which she’d felt. Wasn’t it bizarre not to say hello, even if you were drunk, embarrassed at not being cool in front of the staff?

  Unless you weren’t supposed to be here at all.

  It happened all the time. The hotel doors were open all day and half the night. You walked in, nodded confidently at the desk, nobody gave you trouble. At the right time of afternoon or evening, you could take as long as you liked to get into a few rooms.

  Katelyn had two choices. Go downstairs, pick up the radio she should have had with her—damn it—and get hold of Burt, or else galvanize the useless security guy who spent the night lurking in the basement jerking off. Burt, preferably, who wouldn’t look at her as if asking what she was doing being night manager if she needed her hand held after dark. He wouldn’t say it, or possibly even think it. But other people would, if they heard about it.

  Which led to choice two.

  She turned away from the elevators and set off down the corridor. Feeling very calm, businesslike, and relaxed, she picked up a couple of menus on the way. Continentals.

  Behind her she heard the sound of one of the elevators in movement.

  She stopped and looked back, hoping that it might halt at the floor and the doors open, that another employee would happen to arrive. If so, she’d call them over on some pretext or other.

  The doors didn’t open. She shook her head, irritated. This was her hotel. She wasn’t going to be spooked.

  Another menu. A few more blanks. Another menu. She stopped in midstride, turned back.

  Strange. The door of room 511 didn’t have a menu. But it did have a Please Make Up My Room Now sign.

  That didn’t make sense. Who puts that up before they go to bed?

  She gave the door a gentle push. It opened a couple of inches.

  It was dark inside. Odd again. The door should have been locked, of course, self-locking doors being basic security in a modern hotel. Not to mention it having a latch, which at the very least should have kept it closed.

  She rapped on it, quietly. There was no response.

  She didn’t know if the room was supposed to be occupied. Along with her radio she should have brought up a list. She’d never seen the point. People either wanted breakfast or they didn’t. What was she going to do: wake them up to see if they’d forgotten?

  She reached inside the door and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened. Suddenly this was looking more explicable. Obviously there was a problem with room 511, circuits burned out or something. It happened. The sign on the door was most likely there to remind someone to get on to fixing it.

  But why hadn’t she been told? This was exactly the kind of thing that should be on her schedule. If people didn’t take her seriously, how the hell was she supposed to do her job?

  Katelyn’s mouth set in a tight straight line. Not being taken seriously was something she absolutely couldn’t bear.

  She pushed the door open farther and took a step into the dark interior corridor. Stood and listened. Couldn’t hear anything.

  She walked into the room. It was stuffy. The air around her seemed to ebb and flow, tidal with the breath of all of those sleeping around her. Normally street and ambient light would have kept it light enough to make out shapes easily, but the drapes at the far end had been left drawn. She could make out that the bed was empty and unused, but little more than that.

  She felt her way over to the desk and tried turning on the light.

  It didn’t work either. Okay, so the power was definitely screwed. She didn’t really understand how that could happen in one room alone, but . . .

  Suddenly the room seemed darker still, and there was a soft click. She turned. The rectangle of yellow light from the corridor had disappeared.

  She heard something that might be the sound of feet on carpet. She took a step back, banged into the edge of the desk.

  She swallowed. “Is someone there?”

  He didn’t answer, but there was. He stepped out of the deepest shadow, face a softness in the sparkling gloom.

  Katelyn tried to move backward, but there was nowhere to go. He took another smooth step toward her, and she caught a glint down by his hand.

  She gathered herself to scream, but j
ust then his face passed through a dim beam of filtered light, a cloud coming out from behind another, darker cloud. Something about his features stopped her mouth, and she stared at him.

  “No,” he said firmly. “You don’t know me. Nobody does.”

  And then he came at her, up through time, with a speed nothing could have stopped.

  NOBODY GOT THEIR EGGS OR TOAST OR STEELCUT oats on time the next morning. There were a lot of complaints, especially from the top two floors, where the menus had inexplicably disappeared. It was early afternoon before a guest checked into room 511 and found menus spread all over the floor of a room that was otherwise empty, and where the lights didn’t work.

  The hotel kept the disappearance as quiet as it could. The police questioned Burt first, of course, but he was as bewildered as anyone and more upset than most. He’d liked his boss. Last night he’d nearly said something when they met at the elevator, tried to say “hi” in a way that was a bit more personal, case she thought he was being stand-offish or something just ’cause she was the boss or white or something. Now she was gone. Most people seemed to think she’d just wigged out and would be back in a few days with her tail between her legs. A lady night manager meant “no one back at home,” so they said, and women like that were all one stop from the funny farm or Prozac Beach.

  Burt knew Miss Katelyn wasn’t like that, and when the elevator doors opened the following night and she wasn’t standing there, he believed she was gone forever, and gone nowhere good.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WHEN NINA WOKE AT JUST BEFORE FIVE SHE KNEW there was no point trying to sleep again. She and Ward had been up for two hours after Monroe’s call, trying to work out what it meant and what it didn’t mean. So far as she could see, it could be only one thing. Somehow, somewhere, Zandt had managed to tread heavily on the toes of someone close to the Straw Men. They hadn’t been able to get to him direct, so they’d set him up. She’d tried throughout the night to get hold of him. His phone was turned off.

  Ward had sobered up quickly, and in the end made a suggestion she knew she had to take seriously. She had to get Monroe somewhere private, and tell him some things. Not on the phone. Face-to-face. If she was going to try to convince him that there was a group of men and women operating behind the face of what most people understood as America, that they killed and lied and now had her ex-lover in their sights, they were going to have to be in the same room to do it. It probably should have been done three months ago, but—racked with paranoia and with several deaths on their hands—none of them had believed it the right thing to do.

  Right now, that seemed like a mistake.

  She drank five cups of coffee, working out what she was going to say. How much could be revealed about what had happened up at The Halls, without putting any of them in jail. She waited until seven, when she knew that he would be awake and on his feet. If she could catch him before he left for work, perhaps they could meet. She was walking over to the phone when it rang.

  It was Monroe. He was already in the office. He instructed her to meet him there immediately, and he didn’t sound like someone she could tell anything at all.

  HE WAS WAITING FOR HER OUTSIDE THE ELEVATOR on the fifth floor. His face looked like stone.

  “Charles,” she said quickly, “I need to talk to you.”

  He shook his head curtly and turned to walk down the corridor. A little way along he threw open a door and stood back, waiting for her. She made up the distance hurriedly, stepped inside.

  Room 623 was the kind of anonymous corporate space that exists in every good-sized company in America. Under business conditions it says “Look—we can afford the best stuff out of the catalog. We’re not afraid of you.” What it was supposed to convey in law enforcement Nina had no idea. A large wooden table loomed in the middle, polished to a high reddish gloss and surrounded by the most expensive and least used chairs in the building. One wall of windows looked down over the back parking lot; the others were paneled to waist height but otherwise bare. There was a poorly framed photograph of someone receiving a commendation (not recently), and nothing else.

  A man in a charcoal suit sat in a chair that had been positioned so that it stuck out from the top left corner of the table. He was above average height and had the skin that makes a man of a certain age look like he’s been injection-molded in very hard plastic. His hair was neatly cut. His eyes were a flat, pale blue. His lashes were long. He was not wearing a tie and everything about his shirt said this was because he didn’t have to. He was in his mid fifties. Despite being put together with due regard for all the conventional aesthetic beats, Nina thought he was one of the most unmemorable-looking men she’d ever seen. Nothing specifically said he wasn’t an agent, but he wasn’t. He certainly wasn’t the SAC from Portland, whom she’d met.

  “Good morning,” she said, holding out her hand.

  He didn’t shake. He neither introduced himself nor smiled. Nina left her hand in place for five seconds, then dropped it. She stood her ground a few moments more, giving him the chance to stop being an asshole. He didn’t take it. She held his gaze as long as felt necessary, then looked away.

  She could play that game. “Whatever,” she said.

  “Sit down and be quiet,” Monroe snapped. “You’re here to listen. You’re asked a direct question then you may and should answer it. Otherwise zip it. Understood?”

  Nina knew then that something was badly wrong. Monroe had faults. He had a tendency to think he was smarter than he was, and to believe that criminals—and other agents—would respond to the same management techniques appliance salesmen might. But he was above all else professional, and yet his tone spoke of anger and personal grievance.

  He was still staring at her. “Understood?”

  “Sure,” she said, spreading her hands. “What’s—”

  “The Sarah Becker case,” he said, and Nina’s heart sank further. Even though this related to what she needed to tell him, this was not the way it could happen. Not in front of someone else, and especially not in front of the guy in the corner. Why not sit on one side or the other, incidentally? He had made himself impossible to ignore and yet Monroe had not introduced him. He seemed unwilling to even acknowledge his presence. It was as if there was a ghost at the end of the table, one Nina could see and he could not.

  “Okay,” she said. Monroe opened his folder. There were neat notes on the paper within, but he didn’t refer to them.

  “The Becker family claims their daughter simply turned up on their doorstep,” he said. “Out of the blue, after being missing for a week. Says she was released near her abduction location, which she claims was in Santa Monica, and walked home by herself. A neighbor says otherwise, claims she saw the girl brought to the Beckers’ doorstep by a man and a woman and that a car driven by a third man waited for them across the street. This neighbor is elderly and I wouldn’t normally be interested except that a teenage girl of Sarah’s description and condition received emergency treatment at a hospital in Salt Lake City the night before. She was admitted at the same time as a woman who was suffering from a gunshot wound to the upper right side of her chest. Both patients disappeared early the next morning. And all this at pretty much exactly the time that you sustained just such an injury, apparently in a hunting accident in Montana.”

  Nina’s head hurt and her heart felt as heavy as stone. She shrugged, knowing she was not going to be able to tell Monroe anything at all. Not now, not ever.

  “The hospital sighting engages my interest,” he continued, “because between there and a town called Dyersburg in Montana—the town near to which you flew, only the night before—used to be a development called The Halls, now a hole in the ground that everyone from the local cops to the NSA would like to have explained. The cops are particularly interested because they have a missing officer, a dead Realtor, and two other unexplained fatalities.”

  Nina said nothing. Monroe stared at her. The man in the corner looked at her too. Fin
ally it had begun to piss her off.

  She turned to him and asked, “Who are you, exactly?”

  The man gazed back at her as if she were the vacation roster for a company he didn’t work for.

  When she looked back, Monroe’s eyes were cold. “You think I’m an idiot, Nina? Is that what it is?”

  “No, Charles, of course not,” she said. “This is old ground. I don’t know anything more about Sarah Becker’s return than you do.” He kept silent, forcing her to continue. “I was in Montana visiting John, as I said at the time and several times since.”

  “Right,” he said, blankly affable, and Nina began to feel even more disconcerted. Something about his abrupt switch in tone made her understand there was more going on than she’d realized, and that she was about to find out what it was.

  It wasn’t Monroe who spoke next. It was Corner Man. His voice was dry and uninflected, somewhat nasal.

  “This would be John Zandt, correct?”

  “Yes.” Nina kept her eyes on Monroe, bleakly realizing that her boss might be more subtle than she’d thought. He’d just fed her to this guy. He didn’t appear discomfited by her gaze.

  “The former Los Angeles homicide detective now connected to a murder in Portland. Whose daughter was abducted in May 2000, and never found. Who left the police force and disappeared, before reemerging three months ago as, I understand, your lover.”

  “A situation which is no longer the case. And in what sense would this be any of your business?”

  The pause she left before this question had been supposed to make her sound strong. Even she heard it as evasive. It didn’t matter much because she had evidently become inaudible. Neither of the men said anything.

  She looked at Monroe, fighting to keep her voice calm. “Is that what this is about? A slap on the wrist three years overdue? I kept John informed on the Delivery Boy case, which I shouldn’t have done. You know this already. You know that I felt he deserved to know what we knew because his daughter was missing—and because he’d previously helped us nail a man who was killing black kids when we were getting nowhere at all and the media were kicking us all over town. You explained how my actions breached bureau protocol and your own ideas of compartmentalization and you’ve never treated me quite the same since. I screwed up. I got the message. I thought we were done with it. Let’s move on.”