Man in the Empty Suit (14 page)

He rubbed at his chin. “I didn’t realize they were that dangerous. They told us not to leave here or they’d kill us. We don’t believe them, but we’re old and tired enough to listen.” He shrugged at those sleeping around us. “It’s late for us to be up.”

“You’re up.” It sounded like an accusation.

“I had to speak with you.” His mouth wrinkled into a smile. “Lucky me. What are you doing back here?”

“There’s a tape.”

Lily’s heels scraped against the floor behind me. “What is so important about this damned tape?”

Seventy straightened himself against his cane. He glowed in her presence. I’m sure she noticed it, too. I regarded him with a mix of pity and understanding. He must realize how he looked, but he was fearless in his admiration of her. I respected that.

“I don’t know what is on the tape,” I said. “But it will be important enough for me to leave behind so that I’d find it.”

Lily nodded as if she understood. I marveled again at her calm in the face of my chronology.

Seventy walked back to his chair but didn’t sit down. “You should try to find that tape as soon as possible. But we need a diversion. I have an idea.” He drew the remote from his pocket and turned off the projector. The room fell into almost complete darkness. Only one of the chandeliers was partially lit,
and as I watched, one bulb burst, bouncing orange sparks that faded to red, then black. Phosphene trails slid across in my vision as I heard someone approach.

Seventy said, “You need to do us a favor.”

Screwdriver joined us, eyes on Lily. “What is it?”

“The Youngsters are hunting him and more dangerous than we thought. Can you provide a distraction?”

“I can.” Screwdriver looked at me with a neutral gaze. “Give me your jacket.”

I hesitated. Lily already knew about the gun, but neither Seventy nor Screwdriver had seen it. I reached into my pocket and clamped a hand around it.

Seventy’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I withdrew my hand and the gun with it. Screwdriver’s eyes flared. He struck at my shoulder, and I lowered the gun and took a step back.

“What the hell is he doing with that?” Several of the sleeping figures stirred.

Seventy looked down at the gun as if it were covered in blood. I waited for a withering comment. Instead Seventy said, “No. He’s right to carry it. Obviously if the Youngsters are armed, he should be, too. You must have gotten this from one of them?” His eyes locked onto mine. I felt no need to answer but did anyway, with the lie he’d given me.

“Yes. One of them dropped it.” Behind me I heard Lily’s silence and wondered why she helped me carry the lie.

Screwdriver looked tired. “I still don’t trust him.”

Despite my lies I was offended. “At what point does my fuse get so short?”

Seventy said, “It was a slow burn.” He laughed and gave
Screwdriver a reassuring nod. To me he said, “We don’t have time for this. Give him your jacket.”

I removed my jacket and stood holding the gun and the extra timepiece I’d found near the penthouse. As Seventy and Screwdriver watched me repocket these items, I tried to see if they shared a scar where I’d been struck. Seventy’s old skin was impossible to read. Screwdriver was poorly lit, but I thought I could see a hint of a faded line.

With my jacket on, even with different pants and the close-cropped hair, Screwdriver had effectively become me. We looked at each other a moment, his eyes bouncing from me to Lily and back. His hands ran through the pockets, searching for things that weren’t there, things I couldn’t be sure he remembered, as we were no longer tethered. “What floor do you need to get to?”

“Four,” I answered.

“I’ll try to keep them on five and six, then.”

I nodded, and he turned without another word. Seventy watched him leave. “Don’t lose that.” He pointed at the extra timepiece in my hand.

“I won’t.”

He sat down on his chair. “Go find that tape.”

Beyond the ballroom doors, the stairs sounded with Screwdriver’s footsteps. I crossed the room to the bar and reached over for a bottle.

“You won’t need that,” Seventy called. “You don’t have time for a drink.”

I ignored him. When I turned around, the glow of the projector had returned. Frozen on the wall was a decrepit stairway, white paint peeling, metal handrail rusted. A shadow like
that of a woman’s arm hung on the wall. Beneath the rectangle of the image, caught in its reflection, was the group of men I would become, maybe. Sleeping through the commotion, the panicked chase upstairs, the frantic search for answers about their own dead Body. In the light of the projector, hair of differing lengths and shades of gray—grayer here, whiter there—fluttered in competing drafts. Was I really that indifferent to my own suffering? I wondered. I thought of the boy and how I had failed to comfort him in any meaningful way.

I gripped the bottle of whiskey tight at its neck and marched past the sleeping men. “Where are Yellow and the Drunk?”

Seventy held the remote ready. “Off somewhere tending to their wounds, I’m sure.” He was waiting for me to leave before running the video. Still a private man, I thought of myself, even when only being entertained.

“What wounds does Yellow have?”

Seventy smiled. “Only those you haven’t healed yet.”

Still angry, I took Lily’s hand, and we left the room. As the door shut, I heard the old man resume his movies.

WHEN WE REACHED
the fourth floor, I had little recollection of where we had been held hostage. Lily was likewise unsure. Last time we’d come to this floor, I’d been unconscious and she’d been terrified and bound. I closed my eyes and conjured a dizzy picture of that room, the boys circled around us. In my memory there were streetlights outside the window.

“It has to be on the side of the building facing the street,” I said. We turned right, stepping lightly around rubble and ceiling plaster. This floor was in worse repair than others. Water damage from leaking pipes had caused a great collapse. Musky odors hung in the air, and mold grew along the walls. I walked with one hand outstretched, afraid of what I couldn’t see, despite the predawn sunlight trickling through several doorways. Room after room revealed disheveled furnishings and ripped window covers.

“They’ve been here,” Lily said.

“Who?”

“The children. They’ve been looking for us. Torn every room apart to find us.”

She was right. I marveled at my own pursuit. These Youngsters were more determined than I remembered ever having been. The fanaticism of one, one old enough to feel the danger of being untethered, of having removed his connection to the rest, was enough to drive them all.

We passed room after room, glanced in at floors covered with glass and plaster, paper and wood. Nothing remained to remind one of a hotel other than numbers on the doors. Above us thundered footsteps, raised voices shouting. Screwdriver was one floor up, and the chase was on.

“We have to hurry,” I told Lily. “If they catch him, it will take them just a few seconds to realize they have the wrong man.” We moved to the next room. It was there, among pieces of glass, that Lily found the tape. Her hand shook as she handed it to me.

I watched her try to hide her eyes. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Let’s go.” She left the room, and I followed.

Back through the wet halls we rushed. We’d almost reached the main stairs when voices called from behind us. Youngsters had spotted us. They squealed, as if it were a game, squealed and screamed and grinned like hungry dogs.

I grabbed Lily’s hand, and we ran.

Tripping down the stairs, we reached the third floor and rushed along a hallway. They’d expect me to try to get to the ground floor, I thought, not hide on the third. We ran past the Body’s room, which now stood open, the sheet on the floor, the Body abandoned and uncared for on the table. At
the smaller staircase at the end of the hallway, I heard noises below us, calls of children, high on panic and power. Where was Screwdriver? I thought. Why hadn’t he been able to keep them away longer?

We headed upstairs, thinking to double back to the main stairway, but at the landing outside the fourth floor I heard voices, and we continued up. The light grew as we climbed. Lily leaned to look up. “If we reach the top, it ends there.”

Before I could ask what she meant, I heard footsteps below us. I leaned over the railing and peered down through the squared spiral of stairs. My shadow fell large before me, down the floors. In the center of it, looking back up at me, I saw myself. It was the Nose.

To Lily I whispered, “Get up and climb.” We made our way up the stairs, stumbling on glass and plaster, our footfalls mixing with those of the Nose behind us. He didn’t call out. He didn’t say anything. He worked to gain on us, his breathing fast and hard, and I heard the call of the gun he carried as it hit the handrail. My exhausted, hungover body burned with the effort. Lily and I tripped each other in our rush. My hand on her arm, I tried to balance her. Finally we reached the top, the penthouse landing. To our right yawned the mouth of the elevator, to our left the door of the apartment that I’d only ever been in once, twelve hours earlier. In the dark it had seemed deserted, but now I saw the unmistakable signs that someone had been living here. The floors were worn but clean, the drop cloths over the furniture a temporary protection. New drywall sheets lay on the floor, and a bucket of dried plaster with trowel sat near the door. Repairs were under way.

In the kitchen the service exit was painted shut. I quickly
searched the rooms, looked out the windows. Outside, the fire escape still clung to the upper floors of the hotel. I ran back to the apartment’s entrance and found Lily looking down the stairs.

“He’s stopped,” she said. “I think he’s waiting for more of them.”

I tugged at Lily to follow. “Come on. We’ll go back down the fire escape.”

“It collapsed.”

“Not all of it. We can get down a floor or two.”

She looked from me to the stairs and back. “If he’s stopped, maybe he’s not that dangerous. Maybe we can talk to him.”

“He’s got a gun.”

“So do you.”

I tapped my leg with the revolver. “That’s different. I need it.”

“For what?”

“To keep him away from us.”

She reached out to brush my cheek. “You know, the only one who’s fired a gun around here is you. They haven’t—”

“Listen to me. They’re dangerous. They don’t know what’s at stake.”

“They saw the body.”

She was right. They had seen the Body. Their quest for answers had been transformed, the moment they found the Body, into something else. I tried to imagine what I would be thinking if as a child I’d been shown the cadaver I would become.

“Whether they’ve seen it or not is beside the point,” I said. “Things have spiraled out of control. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Footfalls echoed in the stairway. I grabbed her hand and pulled her through the main room. Dawn chose that moment to arrive, and direct sunlight coming through the wide windows blinded us. I moved on instinct, swinging the window into the room. I was leaning out to survey the fire escape when a loud snapping sound erupted from the kitchen. It could only be the painted door breaking open. My eyes still blurry from the bright sunlight, I saw my arm rise on its own, the gun suddenly weightless in my hand. I aimed at the dark gap of the kitchen doorway. For a terrible moment, nothing happened. When at last a figure stepped into view, I thumbed back the hammer. My eyes cleared enough to see the same gun in the other man’s hand.

“I’ll kill her,” he said.

I squeezed the trigger.

The gun sounded a double shot, though my hand jerked only once. I watched him collapse, watched him fold over at the waist like an empty suit. His head hit the floor hard, and he moaned as his body crashed down around him like a collection of parts. I wasn’t breathing. I realized that I was looking at the black suit I now wore, that the jacket I’d given to Screwdriver was on the floor, wrapped around the man I’d shot. I stepped toward him, more frightened than I’d ever been in my life, and grabbed a shoulder. I was sure it would be Screwdriver, but when I turned him over, the face was wrong—more haggard. A gash oozed blood at his temple at the same place the Inventor had struck me. Blood dripped from the whiskers of his chin, the bullet wound in his neck lost beneath the unruly beard, blood flowing down his front, dyeing his shirt. I gulped for air. I clutched at his
collar and shook him, tried to make the empty, blank eyes focus on me, but they didn’t move. I felt his chest, and my bloodied hand came away without a heartbeat. It was the Drunk. In his hand was the pistol I also held, smoke twisting from the barrels of both. He had faced me, had aimed at me, yet his bullet had missed.

I turned to look at Lily and found her lying on the floor, a red-black puddle growing beneath her.

I think I screamed. I must have. I want to have done so.

I crawled to her, spreading blood across the floor in streaks. Her eyes were wet with tears.

“Take me home. I want to go home.” Her voice was thin and airless. I reached around her, found the exit wound at her back. I tried to hold it closed with my palm, my tears dripping onto her red dress. Behind me came footsteps. I turned around as Seventy and Yellow stepped into the suite from the hallway. Behind them was Screwdriver, my jacket in hand, face flushed and sweaty, masked in anguish. He knelt beside me. Lily looked up at me and sighed.