Sheldon knocked on Thaleman’s room. Hearing nothing, he walked in as though he’d been invited.
* * *
This room was completely different and so was the task. He wasn’t planting evidence and then running. That was a quick job: in and out. But he had to find something now, and that was going to harder.
Fine men’s clothes were scattered on the bed: a blue suit and a brown one, a green silk tie and a red one. A pair of expensive shoes were placed below the blue suit as though he’d been mixing and matching tonight. Whatever he’d chosen to wear must have been in the same vein. Why did he get dolled up to meet Lorenzo?
The dance.
It wasn’t a staff dance. It was for everyone. A Latin guy called Machito was going to play. Miriam had said that it was Afro-Cuban music. Sheldon had never heard of this, but he knew it would give him a right to touch Miriam’s waist, which already made it his favorite kind of music ever.
“Focus,” he said to himself.
On the armchair across the room was a red dress.
Sheldon couldn’t think of a reason why a red dress would be in this room. But he didn’t have time to care because he needed to find the money and he convinced himself the best way to do this was to stop thinking so much and look.
What had Ben Adelman said in the kitchen? He had made an excellent list of where people might hide things.
Under the bed
Under the cushion of the armchair
In the drawers
Under the mattress
Inside the mattress
In the little vent on the ceiling in the bathroom
In the toilet
Whatever the hell else he’d said . . .
And then Sheldon thought: the closet?
Why not?
The closet had white louvered bifold doors. He pulled the doors open using their white knobs.
There, on an upper shelf above the hanging clothes, was a green duffel bag. He pulled it down, unzipped it, and saw thousands of dollars and a .38 revolver. So now Sheldon had two guns.
Sheldon heard a key slot into the hotel room door.
He stepped into the closet and closed it behind him.
As quietly as he could, Sheldon stepped farther behind the hanging clothes.
They smelled like women’s perfume.
Why would they . . . ?
Oh, right, the dress.
Through the slits in the door, Sheldon saw a woman enter the room, and the second he saw her, he closed his eyes in disgust at his second massive blunder.
Mirabelle had said that Thaleman was here to have “some fun with his foreign mistress.” Of course, she’s the one who owned the red dress.
Inside she came. He watched her. She was in her late twenties or perhaps a bit older, but Sheldon was no judge of age. She was very slender and had thick black hair like many women here. She had a better tan, though. Her face was long and narrow, and while she wasn’t traditionally pretty, she was very attractive with massive brown eyes, angular cheeks, and lovely curves Her dress was long and violet; something worn to a serious party.
There was a tall slit up the side.
She was nothing like Mirabelle or Miriam. There was an adultness that exuded from her in a way that Sheldon had not encountered before. Well, from his mother, yes. She was beautiful too. But this was a woman who wasn’t family.
She started talking to herself—loudly—in Spanish.
Sheldon did not speak Spanish and didn’t personally know anyone who did. He could distinguish it from French, German, and Yiddish; French was the singsongy one, German the scary one, Yiddish the German-but-not-scary one, and Spanish . . . the fast one.
He didn’t know what she was saying, but he knew what she was feeling because she expressed it. She was fuming mad, and though he couldn’t make out a single word, her anger was clearly directed at Thaleman—the no-show.
Angry, pacing, and muttering to herself (though gesticulating more than Sheldon’s mother used to), she flicked off her shoes and they landed, very impressively, on the armchair. Sheldon suspected that this was not her first time performing the trick. She was using the tone of voice that people use to lecture someone who is supposed to be there but isn’t, which is apparently the same in every language.
None of that was, strictly speaking, Sheldon’s problem. His problem was finding a way out of the room before Thaleman came back and the two of them got into an actual face-to-face argument. She was already annoyed, and of course, he’d come back in a bad mood too. If Thaleman opened the closet to find him, Sheldon would have to shoot him with his own .38.
Which he didn’t want to do. Lorenzo, maybe, but this guy was just a thief with a pretty girlfriend; one who’d been stood up and was peeved.
Option one was to walk out right now with the bag and make a run for it. If Sheldon did that, he was certain she’d start screaming as soon as he came out of the closet. And what if she could reach her shoes? She could probably plant one between his eyes and knock him out before he said a word.
The next option was standing there and hoping that the woman didn’t open the closet. She was dressed to the nines like she was planning to go to the dance—but she wasn’t, which would explain why she was so animated. If Thaleman had been so picky about his clothing, perhaps he too was dressed up. If he was a fancy-talker (and he’d have to be to get a woman this pretty to go with him), maybe he would apologize to her. Then no one would have to open the closet or get shot!
The woman was now waggling a finger at an invisible person and scolding him, and it struck Sheldon that if this performance had been in English he would have thought the woman was absolutely crazy. Strangely, in Spanish, it didn’t sound crazy at all. Why a different language changed everything he couldn’t begin to guess, but it made him think that maybe being foreign might make her react differently to a man in her closet.
How differently, however, was unclear.
It would be better if he walked out than if she walked into the closet, though. If she threw open the door and saw him—and he waved—Sheldon was pretty sure she’d scream and then beat the stuffing out of him.
She might be from another country, but she wasn’t from another planet.
As he contemplated his options—with time slipping away and Thaleman getting closer every second—the woman placed her thumbs under the straps of her dress, pulled them away from her, and like in a magic act, the whole getup slipped down to her wide hips and collected there for a brief moment before she shoved her thumbs into the crumpled fabric and wriggled it down until friction surrendered to gravity.
She stood there in wine-colored panties and a lace bra.
Sheldon’s mother had never worn red underwear.
None of the photos Sheldon had ever seen of women in their underwear had been in color.
This was new.
Would she know about the money? No, Sheldon thought—surprising himself by being able to think at all. This woman was not Thaleman’s partner in crime. She was his lover.
Lucky son of a bitch.
That sealed it. There was only one way out of the room and only one time to do it.
* * *
Sheldon Horowitz burst out of the closet wearing Thaleman’s jacket and—with a hat over his face in one hand and the filled-up gym bag and his bellhop hat in the other—he started walking.
On the move, he shouted fast and loud in an accent that might have been Latvian or Bulgarian if he’d ever heard either before. “You are very beautiful, and he is a big asshole! You deserve better. I am leaving now. You should leave too. Go to the dance. I am sure it needs you.”
Sheldon crab-walked to the door, the gun dangling from his hand like an unneeded screwdriver. “You’re very pretty. And that burgundy color is very flattering! Bye!”
The woman was slack-jawed and stunned into silence. Her head was slightly cocked to the side as though she was trying to gain purchase on the moment and failing.
Like a long jumper, Sheldon sprung out the
door, slammed it closed, leapt across the hall to the closest room he knew was unoccupied and then—using the master key—burst in and whipped that door closed too.
Inside, he placed his back against the flat surface and slid slowly to the floor. Knees up and butt down, Sheldon placed his head between his hands and the pommel of the .38 against his temple, and he learned instantly that the entirety of the world could sound like nothing more than the beat of his own heart and the telltale sound of a ticking watch.
Killer
IN THE VACANT HOTEL ROOM, with the beat of the party rumbling up from the floorboards, Sheldon recovered his wits. Standing up, he shed Thaleman’s jacket and hat and stuffed them into the duffel bag, stripped a sheet from the bed, and wrapped the bag inside it. Twisting the top, he tossed the bundle casually over his shoulder so it looked like he was hauling laundry.
Sheldon marched directly to the front lobby, almost slipping on an uncollected newspaper on the floor, and found Mrs. Abigail Finegold at the desk.
Mrs. Finegold had been working at Grossinger’s since it opened. As far as Sheldon knew, she had been installed there along with the lamps and carpeting and woodwork.
Mrs. Finegold had seen hundreds of boys like Sheldon come and go over the years, and her mode was to stick to protocol and systems and methods like a librarian at a military base. Sheldon believed that she would have been the world’s perfect spy.
“Mrs. Finegold.”
“Good evening, Sheldon. I would have expected you’d be at the dance. You’re missing quite an event.”
“Mrs. Finegold,” repeated Sheldon—drawing a heavy breath to seal the evening and bring the final act into play. “I know where Mrs. Ullman’s jewelry is.”
Mrs. Finegold raised an eyebrow.
“I got called to fix a toilet—”
“You’re not a plumber.”
“No. But it’s late and guests often ask for the people they know. Whenever we leave a room, we always say, ‘If there’s anything—’“
“I take your point. Go on.”
“I went into room 218 after knocking because the toilet was running and annoying the people next door. I figured I could jiggle it a little, you know? Not fix it, really. For that I’d have to—”
“Get to it.”
“Jiggling didn’t help so I opened the reservoir at the top and looked in, and there they were at the bottom. Like pirate treasure or something. Room 218. At the bottom of the toilet’s tank. You can’t tell anyone it was me who found it. The guy in there? He has a gun.”
“A gun?”
“Bullets and stuff in the nightstand. I’d call the police, Mrs. Finegold. Have them break down the door or something.”
“We don’t need to break down the door, Sheldon. We have the key. In fact, you have the key. Give it here.”
“Right you are, Mrs. Finegold. Listen, I got to go.”
“I think you should probably stay because—”
“Oh, no. They’ll trust you. They’ll listen to you. But a bellhop? Please leave me out of it. And don’t go in there yourself, Mrs. Finegold. I think he’s dangerous.”
Without waiting for her to say another word, Sheldon flipped his sack over his shoulder, strode to the front doors, and pushed them open as if to let in the fresh air of a new day at a beach. Out into the night he stepped, with thousands of dollars in cash, two guns, and a friend to find in the dark.
* * *
SHELDON RODE WEST toward Lansman’s Hotel on a borrowed bicycle he intended to return.
There were no streetlamps and the road was black and unmarked. As he headed out to intercept Lenny and protect him if need be, Sheldon couldn’t leave the feeling behind that he’d closed the cover on an ongoing story. Oh, to have been there when Ben found the jewels, when Ben called the police, when the police arrived and ambushed Lorenzo, when they wrestled him to the ground or maybe shot him full of holes like in a James Cagney movie.
Not that Sheldon had ever seen one, but he’d read the reviews.
He pressed hard on the pedals, building up speed until he was going so fast that he could barely control the bicycle. All that pent-up adrenaline inside his body was coursing through him, and he flew across the earth like God’s face over the waters.
The wind cooled the sweat forming on his head and a chill trickled down his spine. He stood up on the pedals and glided through starlight and the shadows of trees cast by the moon.
* * *
Up ahead, he saw headlights in a field illuminating the spinning wheel of a bicycle.
* * *
The car was stuck in a ditch forty feet off the road into the high grass; the engine running fast. It was bulbous and black, and its roof looked like the carapace of a giant beetle. The headlights cast otherworldly rays into the wild flowers that swayed in the night breeze, into the chrome spokes that glinted and spun, twisted and wrecked.
* * *
Sheldon pulled off the road a hundred feet from the accident and dropped the bike. He hurled the green bag of money to the ground and drew Henkler’s .45 from his belt, chambering a round and flicking off the safety as he ran. He knew—he absolutely knew—that it was Lenny’s bicycle. Whether it was Lorenzo or Thaleman in the car, he couldn’t tell, and he didn’t care. All he cared about was his friend.
“Lenny!” Sheldon yelled.
This was all his fault. All his fault, he thought, as he stumbled over uneven ground, as he fought through overgrown grass and brushed the gnats from his face that were swarming to the sweat on his head.
“Lenny!” he yelled, hands locked outward, the barrel pointing at the car—a target as big as a barn that was willing him to plug it with lead.
He was close enough now. If he crouched and took aim, he could punch through the paper-thin sheet metal of the car’s door. He’d miss at first, but he had seven rounds to get it right, and those bullets would eviscerate anything in that car.
“Lenny!” he yelled again.
“I’m here,” said a pained voice from the grass close to the bicycle.
Nothing from the car. No movement, but now Sheldon was only thirty feet away and he could see a figure in the car. The silhouette of a slouched man.
He could shoot him from here. Even in the dark. He’d hunted by night.
Who even cared if it was Lorenzo or Thaleman? One down and one to go. That would be fine with him.
But Sheldon didn’t fire.
Closer and closer he approached, step by step, ready to blast out the windows, blast through the door, pepper the beast, and blow the guy’s head off.
Why wasn’t he shooting? Was it fear?
No. He was angry.
He still wasn’t shooting, though.
As he stopped twenty feet away from the car and placed that black shape in his sights—a perfect shot and he wouldn’t even have to see the blood, the head would drop fast—he had to wonder what he was doing, and it dawned on him with a gentle simplicity: He couldn’t see his target, and if he pulled the trigger without being able to see his target, his father would have been angry at him and he didn’t want to make his father angry. He had never wanted that. Because he loved him.
“Lenny!” Sheldon yelled again. Lenny appeared in the yellow beams of the headlights, his face bloody and one hand on his head. He stood shakily. Seeing that Lenny was all in one piece, Sheldon—like an FBI agent on the hunt for the Mafia—now sprinted up to the car and pointed the gun right through the window at the man inside.
With the engine running, the dashboard lights were lit. Though they were faint, Sheldon could now see the face of the unconscious man. It took him only a glance to realize that he had never seen this man before, so it wasn’t Lorenzo, and from the way he was dressed, it wasn’t Thaleman either.
“What are you doing here?” Lenny asked him, hobbling across the ground toward the car.
“What?” said Sheldon, walking around the back of the car and circling toward the driver’s side to get a better look at the man he didn’t sh
oot.
“What are you doing here? It’s the middle of night. You should be in bed.”
“You’re loopy,” said Sheldon. “You hit your head.”
The door was broken and partly open. The engine continued to spew out a thick oily exhaust that choked the air around them. Sheldon pointed the gun at the man. Whoever the hell he was, he’d still run Lenny off the road, and Sheldon was prepared to adopt a new motivation for shooting someone: He wasn’t picky.
The driver was blond and young, maybe a few years older than Abe at most. He wore one of those new Aloha shirts from Hawaii that Sheldon had seen in a magazine. How it got to the Catskills from the Pacific he had no idea, but there was no way that the beautiful woman at the hotel would have gone to a dance with a guy who was dressed like this.
“Lenny, what the hell happened?” Sheldon asked.
They heard police sirens in the distance.
“He was following me. He was swerving around behind me. I got scared and went off the road, and he followed me into the field.”
Sheldon could smell the stink of bourbon and vomit emanating from the car. It was revolting.
“This guy is pissed drunk. He was probably trying to get past you.”
“Why did he follow me off the road?” Lenny asked, starting to regain his wits.
“I don’t know. Maybe he was just following whatever was moving.”
“I guess.”
“You hurt?” Sheldon asked him.
“My head kind of hurts. And my arm.”
“Nothing broken?”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
Police cars were coming up the road and traveling in the direction of Grossinger’s. Sheldon wasn’t sure whether these were the cops Mrs. Finegold had called or whether they were on their way here. If they were coming here, they’d be arriving at quite a scene. The car, the drunk, Lenny’s head, the bike, the gun, and the cash. He gave himself a few seconds to concoct a story and came up with nothing.
How to Find Your Way in the Dark Page 27