by Peter Clines
“So where’s the electricity come from?”
Veek shrugged and shook her head. “I have no idea.”
Thirteen
It took Nate half an hour to get his head back in order. He sat on the end of Veek’s bed and stared up at the ceiling fan and the three bulbs mounted to it. She cracked open a can of Diet Pepsi from the fridge, swallowed a few mouthfuls, and then topped it off with generic rum. She handed him the can and he took a long drink from it.
“I get it,” she said. “When I first noticed it last year I was in denial for a week.”
“Have you told anyone else about it?”
“Like who?”
He took another sip of the spiked soda and shrugged. “Scientists. The news. I don’t know, somebody.”
“I’d get evicted.”
“How do you know?”
Veek popped another can of Diet Pepsi and took a sip. “I tried asking Oskar about it when I first saw it, during my denial week. He got annoyed and told me I was being foolish. So I tried to come up with a rational explanation and couldn’t. When I went back to him he gave me this whole spiel about what a great deal the apartments here are, how much the owners like it being a quiet place, can’t I just be happy with it, all that sort of stuff. Then he told me if I tried to make a fuss out of this and become a disruptive influence, he’d have to ask me to move out. With deductions to my deposit, of course.”
“So you didn’t do anything?”
“Hey,” she said, “maybe you make a million dollars a year doing data entry, but believe it or not, I only make minimum wage. And despite what some people like to think, minimum wage means poverty level. This place is a godsend. I’m not taking any stupid risks.”
“Sorry.”
“Whatever.”
“I don’t actually make a million dollars a year doing data entry.”
“I figured.”
“It’s only about seven hundred thousand after taxes.”
“Fuck you,” she said, but her lips curled up a little bit on the ends. She dropped into the office chair by her desk. “I’ve tried looking up the builders, too,” she said. “You’ve seen the cornerstone, right?”
He nodded.
Her fingers guided the mouse through a few quick shifts and clicks. A picture of the marble block appeared on one of her monitors. “WNA and PTK,” she said. “I’ve been going under the assumption PTK is P.T. Kavach.”
“Who’s that?”
“No idea. The name doesn’t show up anywhere. Kavach is a Marathi name, and you’d think a Hindu in 1890s Los Angeles would stand out, but I can’t find anything. There was a Prateek Kamerkar who moved here with his family in 1898, but that’s it. I’ve tried looking with a dozen different search engines using a bunch of different variables. Architect, building, construction, Kenmore, Los Angeles.” She shrugged.
“What about WNA?”
“Also no clue. There’s millions of hits. Could be anyone.” She shrugged. “Heck, I’m even assuming they’re both male names because it’s turn of the century. Not a lot of women in construction back then, but it’s not impossible, I guess.”
Nate looked at the picture of the cornerstone topped with bricks. He sipped his Diet Pepsi and felt the rum slow his pulse a little more. “Do you know about the machine room up on the roof?”
“What about it?”
“I thought it looked too big when I first saw it. My next door neighbor, Tim, he agrees. He says it’s probably not a machine room.”
“What is it then?”
Nate shrugged. “Beats me.” He looked at her. “Two years here and you never noticed the big-ass brick room on the roof?”
“I don’t go up there much,” Veek said. “I’ll add it to my list, though.”
“You have a list?”
“Of course I have a list.” She had a sip of her own drink. Her face softened a bit. “Can I see your kitchen light?”
A few minutes later they were up in his kitchen. She closed the blinds, grabbed his Sprint bill, and passed the envelope back and forth under the bulb. The paper had an eerie glow in the dim kitchen.
She reached over to flip the light off. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Cool’s one word for it.”
“And you’re sure it’s not just a regular black light?”
“Positive.”
Veek looked at him again. “You know,” she said, “we could do a lot more with two of us. It’d be less risky.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think? Want to snoop around the building sometime?”
Nate blinked. “Snoop?”
“You know, investigate,” Veek said. “But not be obvious about it.”
“No, I know what snoop means. I just didn’t think anyone actually used that word out loud.” He smiled. “Is this like Scooby Doo now? Do we need to wait for Fred and Daphne or should we just start tiptoeing around?”
“Look, I just thought—”
“I’ve got an orange sweatshirt here somewhere. You’d make a passable Velma.”
“Shut up.”
“Don’t be mad. Everyone thought Velma was kind of hot when they got older.”
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to be a jackass about—”
“I’m in,” he said. “Sorry. Whatever you’re up for, I’ve got your back.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
“Oskar will throw a fit if he finds us,” she said. “Possible eviction.”
“If he finds us. Both of us together means one person keeping watch.”
“You think it’s worth it?”
He looked up at the light bulb. He thought about the lack of power lines and the padlocks on apartment 14 and the ornate double doors in the basement and having no idea what he was going to do with his life.
“Yeah,” said Nate. “Totally worth it.”
SECOND STORY
Fourteen
Monday meant back to work, and Nate had a hard time concentrating. Sunday evening he’d been ready to start searching the building, but Veek commuted to Santa Monica so she had to be up early. Explorations had to wait.
He got home before Veek and spent two hours waiting for her. He walked down to her door four times to see if she’d made it home. On the fourth trip, he realized he was acting like a stalker. He turned on the television in the lounge. The only thing worth watching was Jeopardy, which he’d never been good at, but stumbling over the answers and questions made him feel a bit less stalker-ish.
Veek thumped up the stairs just as Alex Trebek gave the Final Jeopardy answer. She had a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. She raised an eyebrow when she saw him in the lounge. “Hey,” she said. “Are you stalking me?”
“No, of course not.”
“Good.”
“I wanted to talk to you about a couple things.” Nate made a few subtle gestures at the walls. “You know.”
She shook her head. “I really don’t have time right now.”
“Why not?”
“I got an extra assignment. It means some overtime. I can’t pass up the money.”
“Ahhh,” he said. “Of course.”
Her lips twitched and almost formed a smile. “I’ve been waiting over a year for this,” she told him. “Don’t worry, the building’ll still be here on Saturday.”
He went back to his apartment and searched the web for everything he could find on black light bulbs. It led him to other pages about basic electrical wiring and pages of terms he had to look up. Three hours later he felt like he didn’t know much more about UV lights than he did when he first sat down at his laptop.
Nate got up and switched on the kitchen light. His shirt and socks glowed. He held his hand out and examined the blue aura around his fingernails.
A few brilliant points of light spun and circled around his microwave. They split off and scattered across the counter. Some vanished into outlets, others raced up the wall. The green roaches were little
flares under the black light.
A bright spot appeared from beneath the refrigerator. It scurried out to the middle of the floor and paused. He crouched to look at it.
It was his mutant cockroach again, the one with the extra leg. It had gotten bigger. Its body was an inch long now, and so were its antennae. They waved in the air for a moment, then it spun and dashed back under the fridge. The extra leg didn’t slow it down at all.
He straightened up and saw a few more flashes of light. He leaned over the counter and two of the roaches froze. Their gleaming antennae tilted back and forth, trying to sense his intentions. He looked at the gleaming patterns on their shells and the way their—
Nate blinked and squinted at the bugs. Both of the roaches had an extra leg. Four on the right, three on the left.
He looked over at one of the others. The glow made it easy to pick out details. It dashed under the toaster as soon as it sensed his attention, but not before he saw its bonus leg. He stretched his head back and tried to focus on the one by the light. Seven legs scurried across the ceiling and the roach vanished into the fixture. He saw its tiny shadow for a moment inside the light and then it was gone.
* * *
Tuesday was a band-aid peeled off as slowly as possible. Another crate of returns showed up. He was halfway through sorting the bundles of cards and magazines when Eddie showed up. “Staff meeting.”
Nate looked around. Zack and Anne returned his baffled look. He looked back at Eddie. “And?”
“Staff meeting,” repeated Eddie. “The boss wants everyone there.”
“I’m just the data entry guy,” Nate said.
“And I’m only a temp,” said Anne.
The heavy man shrugged. “They want you to feel included here.”
Nate tried to think of one time in the past two years he’d felt included during work hours. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean me,” he said. “And I’ve got a bunch of new work.” He tapped the mail crate with his foot. “I’d get way behind.”
“She wants everyone there. That’s what she said.”
The meeting he didn’t need to be at ended two hours later, and Nate had forty minutes to kill at his computer before the day was over. He spent most of it sorting the new returns into rough stacks and figuring out how much work didn’t get done while he was at the meeting. It was useful information to have later in the week when Eddie complained how far behind Nate was getting.
The workday ended. He struggled through Los Angeles’s famous rush hour traffic and then spent close to an hour trying to find a parking space. Wednesday morning was street sweeping for half the streets in the neighborhood; people were already jockeying for next-day positions.
Near the top of Kenmore’s small hill was a section of curb between two driveways. Two cars could fit there, but someone had parked a green Taurus in the middle of it. He grumbled for a minute and then noticed the driver behind the wheel. The man was staring at a laptop, mooching wireless from someone’s open signal.
Nate revved his engine, then revved it again. When it got no response, he tapped the horn. The man glanced up and gave him a cold stare.
“Hey,” called Nate, “could you pull forward a bit? I only need two or three feet and I could fit behind you.”
The man turned his attention back to his computer.
“Hey!” Nate hit the horn again. The man looked him in the eyes. “We all need to park here. Don’t be a jerk about it.”
The driver’s eyes hardened, and for a minute Nate had the sinking feeling he’d picked the wrong guy to berate for his parking skills. Then, as slowly as possible, the man set his laptop down in the passenger seat and started the Taurus. He pulled forward five feet and stopped.
Nate’s Volkswagen moved forward, back, and parallel parked. He was careful not to get too close to the other car’s bumper. He didn’t want to be hanging in the driveway behind him, but he was even more certain he didn’t want to bump the Taurus.
He grabbed his bag, locked his car, and headed down the hill. “Thanks,” he said as he passed the Taurus. He tried to make it sound as sincere as possible.
The man ignored him. He was focused on his laptop, watching a YouTube video or streaming porn or something.
Nate stopped at his mailbox, tossed some junk mail in the trash, and headed up to his apartment. He tossed his tie on the desk and pulled a beer from the fridge. While he drank it, he stared up at the kitchen light.
It was close to eight when he went down to see Veek.
“You’re getting kind of creepy,” she said, “and I’m saying this as someone mildly obsessed with this place.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve just got a lot of ideas.”
“I don’t have a lot of time, though. Trying to finish up this other assignment.”
“Just one thing.”
“Seriously,” she sighed, “I have to get this done. It’s worth five hundred bucks to me.”
“Have you ever tried looking up all the plaques?”
“Plaques?”
“All the ones under the stairs.” He tipped his head toward the stairwell.
She shrugged. “It’s an old building on the edge of Hollywood. I didn’t think they were anything special.”
“What?”
“They try to make everything sound special around here. It probably just means Humphrey Bogart lived here for a week or something.”
“You think this place is a national historic landmark because Humphrey Bogart lived here?”
She blinked.
“And no matter what they’re for, there’s probably a ton of information about the building itself. Leads, at least.”
She stared at him for a moment. “I’m an idiot,” she muttered.
“I’ll remind you of it later,” he assured her.
Fifteen
“Department of the Interior,” said the man. “How may I direct your call?”
“Hi,” said Nate. “I was wondering who I could talk to about national landmarks?”
“There’s a full list of all registered sites and national historical landmarks on the Department’s website. W-W-W-dot—”
“No, I mean I have specific questions regarding a certain landmark. Is there someone there I could speak to?”
Like any good receptionist, the man’s sigh was quick and almost silent. “One moment please,” he said.
Nate glanced over his shoulder. He could’ve made the call on his cell, but if Eddie decided to walk in and he was on his own phone it’d be grounds for a speech. With the land line he could try to keep the illusion of a business call and wave away interruptions.
After an agonizing two minutes, during which he was assured his call was very important, the line picked up again. “Records,” said a woman.
“Hi,” he said. “My name’s Nate Tucker. I’ve got a couple questions regarding a specific national landmark. I was hoping someone there could help me.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Well, I’ve got a national historic landmark near me and there’s no mention on the plaque of why it’s a landmark. I was hoping someone there might know.”
“Did you check the internet? We have a full list of the landmarks up on our website with links to—”
“Yeah, I checked. It’s not on your list.” Which was true. He’d spent another hour online the night before. The building wasn’t on any lists—federal, state, or city.
There was a brief pause. “Sorry?”
“It’s not on your list. I was wondering if it might be under a different name or something, maybe?”
“Are you sure it’s a landmark?”
“There’s a big brass plaque down in the lobby. Three of them in fact.” He tapped a few keys and pulled up a picture of the plaque Veek had emailed him.
“It’s in a lobby?”
“Yeah. The landmark’s a building. I live there, actually.”
He could almost hear the woman frown on the other end of the phone. “If it’s a b
uilding it could be on the registry, but it shouldn’t be a historic landmark. You’re not living in Monticello, are you?”
“Nope. An old brownstone in Los Angeles.”
“And you’re sure it’s a historical landmark plaque?”
Nate described the slab of brass and read the words off it.
He heard the frown again and the tapping of computer keys. “You said you’re in Los Angeles?”
“Yep.”
“Address?”
He told her and there was more tapping, followed by rapid clicks from a mouse. “You said the date on the plaque was 1960?”
“Yes.”
She blew some annoyed air onto the phone and the mouse clicked again. “The Kavach Building?”
“Yes!” He sat up in his chair and glanced back at the door. Zack peered around the cubicle wall and Nate waved him away. “Yeah, that’s it. Do you know why it’s a landmark?”
He heard a few more taps. “Okay,” she said. “This is weird.”
“What?”
“The Kavach Building was one of the original ninety-two sites named as national historic landmarks in 1960 by Secretary Seaton. It’s the third to last on the list. But that’s pretty much it.”
There was a pause. “What do you mean?” asked Nate.
“There’s no links, no cross-files, nothing.” Her mouse went click-click-click. “It’s listed if I break down landmarks by year and by state, but nowhere else. I can tell you it’s in Los Angeles, California, and it was one of the first national landmarks. That’s it.”
“How’s that possible?” he asked. “That you don’t have anything else?”
“If you’d asked me half an hour ago, I would’ve said it’s impossible,” she told him. “I should have an encyclopedia’s worth of history, photos, annual reports by assigned agents... There has to be some sort of glitch.”