According to Their Deeds (37 page)

“One hundred thousand?” Dorothy was shocked.

“It was the only offer he was authorized to make.”

“Who was he?”

“Just Mr. Smith.”

“That’s how he signed the check?”

“No check, dear. Just hundred-dollar bills. A thousand of them.”

Dorothy was very shocked.

“Where is it?”

“In the basement at the store.”

They reached their house. Charles parked on the street in front.

“Does Angelo know?”

“Know what?”

“That there is a hundred thousand dollars of cash just downstairs from him.”

“Um, not necessarily.”

“Why didn’t you bring it home?”

“I thought it would be safer locked in the basement of the store.”

“Is it just lying out?”

“It’s not lying. It’s telling the truth.”

“Charles.”

“It’s on the shelf behind the Dante.”

They were finally settling into bed at three o’clock in the morning.

“You could sleep late tomorrow,” Dorothy said.

“Maybe I will. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“You always will be, dear.”

“I’m too tired to think what that means. The only thing I have to do tomorrow is to call the police detective.”

“Did you see Mr. Horton?”

“Cane. Edmund Cane. Of Horton’s. Yes.”

“Did he tell you anything about the desk?”

“No, except that he never told the FBI anything about it. But someone must have.”

“Told them what?”

“I’m too tired to think what that means either. Oh, Dorothy, what was Derek doing? What was going on?”

“Someone must know.”

“I keep thinking about the conversations I had with him. Especially the last one.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Just a game we had started. It was about how we lived our lives, but it was mostly just an exercise in repartee. That’s what I thought, but suddenly I wonder what he really meant.” He turned off the light. “How I wish I could have one more talk with him.”

“So, Charles, how do you like the game now?”

“I don’t, Derek. It’s quite unfair that you’ve put me up to it. I’d rather not be playing.”

“I think you need to be. We’ll see if the principles you’ve spouted all these years will stand up to a real test.”

“Is that the point, Derek? Is that why you put the papers in the book? To embroil me in all of this?”

“It seems to have worked.”

“But surely you didn’t expect to be killed. Was it just a common burglary, or was it one of your victims?”

“You’re only imagining me, Charles. You know I can’t answer that.”

“Were you really a blackmailer, Derek? Was that the game you were playing, and your ‘situation’ at the office?”

“You don’t sound content, Charles. You must be losing our game.”

“But you’re dead, Derek, so I don’t think you’ve won it.”

“No. It isn’t pleasant here. The circles go deeper and deeper and I still haven’t found my depth.”

“Who killed you, Derek?”

“Have I passed that circle yet? I believe I have. The murderers. Yes, that was one or two back. I hope I’m not headed to the ninth circle, to the circle of traitors.”

“Who was the other person you were blackmailing? The person who tried to buy your desk? The person Patrick White had helping him. Who was it, Derek? Was that who killed you?”

“Patrick White? Yes, he’s down here now, too. I don’t know where they’ll put him. There’s a circle for everyone. I hope I’m not in for the traitors, the betrayers. That’s the worst judgment of all, way down at the very bottom of the Inferno. Am I a traitor? Did I betray you, Charles? Is that why I’m still going down?”

“No, Derek. You’re no traitor. I forgive you.”

THURSDAY

MORNING

“Charles.”

“The Inferno.”

“Charles!”

“What?”

The room was dark. Dorothy was beside him. He sat up awake.

“You were dreaming. You were saying something.”

The clock said 3:40.

“I know who it is,” Charles said.

“What?”

“I know who killed Derek.”

The telephone rang.

Or was it sirens? He was still disoriented. He found the screaming telephone.

“Hello?”

“Is this Charles Beale?” the voice said.

“Yes, it is.”

“This is Alexandria Emergency Services. We have a call that your building on South Fairfax street has a fire.”

“In the building?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve dispatched trucks.”

“Fire?”

Dorothy gasped.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Mr. Beale, the Fire Department trucks are just leaving now. They’ll be there in two minutes. Stay away from the building.”

“Yes, yes. But I have to go.”

He put down the telephone. Dorothy was up from the bed getting dressed very quickly.

They did hear sirens.

He ran. The streets were empty and black. He didn’t even think of driving until he was already on the sidewalk running, panting, then walking, then running and coughing and pushing.

The streets were black and red and blue and white. The colors flickered ahead. An infernal world was before him and he raced to it as fast as his slow, uncooperative legs could.

He turned the last corner and it was all before him, bright and screaming.

The grinding lights filled everything and they were still coming.

There was sound, sirens as demonic as the lights.

He was close and he didn’t know how to stop running. But he was halted by a wall of smoke and everything else was unreal; the smoke was real. And the smoke was born of burning.

The smell told him what was burning, not just bitter and choking but horrible with the taste of forest and of old linen. He stumbled closer.

He was stopped by arms and voices, and then he couldn’t move at all but was made stone by the smoke and red light that was inside.

Dorothy stood beside him.

The white spotlight glare made the beautiful old building grotesque and drowned the red light inside. There was only smoke. He choked on the smoke.

It was gray and poured out in an upended waterfall, gushing from windows and streaming from everywhere else. Terrible smoke, full of fragments of pages; they were tiny glittering sparks, scattering everywhere. Scattering everything. Everything that they were.

All of the books.

The men were breaking open the front door. The flames in the window flared and forced out huge planets of smoke. The whole street was smoke.

Water poured in, but the flames were unquenchable. All the windows were full of flames, every story of the building was in flame. Every story in every book was in flame.

The top floor was in flame. Angelo’s window was filled with smoke.

Men with hoses pushed through the smoke at the front door.

Something central inside surrendered and broke apart and fell, and waves of heat and smoke and fire crashed against everything. The men fell back from the door.

Now the whole building was a chimney, pulling in oxygen at the base and feeding itself to the inferno. The flames were insatiable.

Something central inside Charles surrendered and broke apart and fell.

Rivers of water rained in, and how could the fire still burn?

Despair crashed against everything and minutes or years passed.

The flames faltered under the onslaught, finally, or because everything was consumed. The men renewed their attack on the door. There were shouts above the siren howling. There was nothing but smoke; everything was only smoke now. Everything that had been was only smoke now.

More men were in the front door. Why would so many go in? There was no end of the smoke. Charles could smell every book in it, and everything else that was in it. What else was in the smoke?

The men came back out. They were carrying something. It took three of them.

Charles could move again, but he was stopped, held back.

“Who is it?”

The men carrying didn’t hurry once they were out from the smoke. They carried to an ambulance. They laid on a stretcher, slowly, and covered with a sheet and set up into the open doors and the ambulance drove off.

All of the men had come out of the building. Water still rained down on it. There was no flame, only smoke.

“There’s a basement,” Charles said. “It’s a fireproof room.”

“It’s too dangerous,” they said. “We have to wait.”

It was 4:30 in the morning.

Dorothy stayed with him. He stood and waited.

The hoses stopped. The smoke only oozed now, swamp-like. The street cleared. Only a few men stayed.

A police car arrived and a grim man from it came to him. The man wore a jacket, and Charles shivered. It had been so hot before.

“Mr. Beale?”

“I’m Charles Beale. I own the building.”

“Yes, sir.” The man spoke with the weight of death. “Detective Mondelli. We recovered a body from the fire.” The man wasn’t weighed down by it, though. He was doing his job.

“I saw them,” Charles said.

“Can you help us identify it?”

Charles walked away. The man went to Dorothy, but she was crying. Charles took her away and the man waited.

Charles and Dorothy stood and looked at the smoke and black window holes and the black door hole. A fireman stepped up to it and looked in.

“I want to get to the basement,” Charles said to a fireman.

“I don’t think—”

“Now!” Charles pushed him away. “I’m going in. Are you coming with me?”

They did come. Three of the four firemen still there came. Charles crossed the threshold into the black gaping hole.

The fire still raged inside, but a fire of silence and blackness and an unbreathable sopping smoky stench. It was much worse than the fire of heat and light.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t stare at the charred walls and open ceiling or anything else the flashlights touched. It was too different from what it had been to possibly be the same room. The floor held.

He hurried to where the stairs had been. The upper stairs had fallen but the stairs down were still passable.

“Watch out!”

But he didn’t care. He had to get to the bottom. The steps held.

The lights fell onto the door. The knob wouldn’t turn. The walls and door weren’t burned. He used his key and the knob was free, but the door still wouldn’t open.

He pushed but it did not yield. The bottom landing was filled with water, over his shoes.

He was pulled back and stronger shoulders went against the door.

It moved a little and then an axe came down on it and it cracked and fell inward.

Heavy, evil smoke roiled out. The lights could not penetrate. They fell back from Hadean gate coughing and daunted and the smoke came and came, darkness itself.

Charles abandoned hope. Without hope, he still went on.

He dropped to his knees and crawled under the smoke. He felt it running over his back like sand. His eyes were closed. His face was just over the face of the waters and sometimes dipped into them.

His head rammed into something hard as above him came a cracking and then a heavy, rigid weight came down on his back, forcing him down and submerging his face. He pushed up against it, choking and drowning.

The weight was pulled off. He sputtered, forcing water out of his lungs but filling them only with poison air, and he was still blind.

He found what he had run into. A chair, against the door. He pushed it aside and the broken door that had fallen on him, and crawled on, faster now.

The lights were behind him, just dim, dull spears into the Cerberus of smoke.

He reached the desk. A portion of the black air had drained out and clear air had begun to fill in, up to a foot now above the level of the water; but still no light could pierce the smoke.

He felt his way around the desk. He could sense the other men behind him.

Finally a shaft of white cut through the clear air between water and smoke and found the wall.

“Look at that,” a voice said, a voice that sounded like sound through smoke.

Like light through smoke, only faintly more than shadows, a dim row of ghostly books stood silent above the ruin of the room.

“I don’t believe it,” said another voice.

But Charles didn’t care. The chair was all important. It meant more than all the books.

His hand in the water touched something else solid, but not hard.

“Here!” Then he coughed again from breathing in enough air to speak. “Down here!”

The lights found him and what he was holding up out of the water, a hand.

Movement became urgent. He pulled the hand, and arm, and he saw black hair. Angelo’s black hair.

Angelo’s black hair. Angelo’s black hair. Charles touched the hair.

Stronger arms and shoulders again took hold, and he slid through the water, getting out of the way. His back found the desk and he sat against it. There was only one more thing.

Pulling and lifting, the men drove, burdened, toward the door and stairs. For one moment a light passed over the black hair and closed eyes and white teeth, and the jaw convulsed and choked in the wicked air.

He was alive. That was the one thing.

The men staggered away up the stairs, and the room went black and still.

Then Charles rested. The water was cold and he was soaked. The air was foul but could be breathed. Slowly his eyes could see thin gray light from the doorway, from the street or the beginning of morning. Even here, the night was not absolute always.

The light touched the walls and the books, or Charles could see them without light. They had also survived for a while longer, even if nothing would last forever, and what a story they must have seen played out in the smoke.

“Hey! Buddy! You still down there?”

The lights came back and the air was clear.

“I’m here,” Charles said.

“You all right?”

“I will be.”

“Your wife’s throwing a fit up there.”

They helped him stand but he wouldn’t leave yet. Through the weird girders of light, he grabbed a book and then the package he’d left last night. Only then they slogged through the debris and murk and up into the world of the living.