The door opened. “Stand over there,” said Franco, pointing to the chair that was now by the window. Kevin did as he was told, and Franco took the tray into the hall.
He came back in and said, “You need to hit the can before you go to sleep?”
“Yeah.”
Franco drew a Beretta automatic and waved it toward the hallway. “Come on.”
Kevin, with Franco and the gun at his back, walked down the hall he had come through earlier. A Persian runner stretched down the middle of the hallway and polished oak flanked it to either side. Antique tables lined the hall at regular intervals, and fine tapestries hung where mirrors were absent. Intricate wainscotting ran the length of the hall. In all, Kevin supposed the effect was to be one of lavish opulence, but he found it overdone, as if someone had given an unlimited budget to a fledgling interior decorator.
The mansion was large enough so that the hall formed a complete circuit joined by the large staircase at the back of the house. A balcony overlooked the balustrade but ended about halfway around the circuit, giving way to several rooms. From his first walk to his room at the front of the house, Kevin had seen only one other room with its door open, and that had been a bedroom.
“Here,” Franco said when they had walked about fifty feet down the hallway. Kevin turned and saw him pointing at a door on the interior of the mansion, obviously chosen because it had no windows.
Kevin opened it to find a bathroom to equal the unbridled opulence of the hallway. Marble floors, brass fixtures, beveled mirrors, all shined and polished to perfection. He flicked the light switch and track lighting came on accompanied by a soft fan.
Franco shoved him into the spacious bathroom. “Go ahead.”
The door was still wide open, and Kevin began to shut it. Franco pushed it back, almost slamming into the wall.
“Uh-uh.”
Kevin was afraid that he wouldn’t get the privacy he needed, but he tried to appear angry. “Can’t I take a shit in peace? Where the hell am I going to go?”
Franco thought about it for a second, appraised the room’s dimensions, and then relented, releasing the door. “Okay, but I don’t want to hear that lock click. We got the key downstairs, so don’t bother.”
“Thank you,” said Kevin and closed the door.
Having taken care of his physical hygiene back in the other bathroom, he started to quietly search the cupboards for anything that might be of use to him, hoping that they hadn’t cleaned this bathroom out as well as the one in his room. The cabinet under the sink was bare, as were the six drawers to either side. He was careful not to bang the cabinet or drawers for fear of alerting Franco to what he was really doing. It was almost two minutes before he got to the cabinet behind the mirror. Still nothing. Kevin looked around the large bathroom, about to give up on finding anything, when he saw a linen closet which doubled as a stand up mirror.
The closet had no handle, and the edge cutout to open it had been so ingeniously integrated into the mirror’s design that he almost hadn’t noticed the door. He tiptoed over to it and held his breath as he opened it.
Six evenly-spaced shelves went from top to bottom, and immediately Kevin could see the bare white space. His hope faded, but he decided to look more thoroughly anyway in case something small had been missed. He began on the bottom shelf and made his way up.
The first five shelves were empty, and it appeared that the top one, which lay about two inches above his eye level, was as well. He stood on his toes to reach to the back. Kevin caught a glimpse of color toward the back of the shelf.
He strained as much as he could to see to the back, and he became excited when he saw a number of bottles and cans shoved together. He couldn’t be sure from this angle, but he thought one said ammonia and another that could have been a blue and white bottle of Clorox bleach.
Whoever had emptied out the bathroom must have been shorter than Kevin. From a lower angle, the person would never have been able to see the cleaning fluids bunched on the top shelf. It was exactly what Kevin had been hoping for.
He reached his hand to the back and the tips of his fingers brushed against one of the cans. He felt it nudge and gasped involuntarily when he realized it was about to fall. The noise would surely raise suspicions outside. He strained even harder until it felt as if his arm would come out of the socket and was able to steady the can.
He looked at his watch. He’d been in the bathroom five minutes now. Any longer and Franco might barge in on him without knocking. He didn’t have time to inventory what was up there. It would have to wait for the next visit.
Kevin silently closed the closet door, then walked heel-to-toe over to the toilet and flushed it. After washing his hands and toweling off, he opened the door. Franco stood on the other side of the hallway with his gun drawn.
“I guess this one worked,” he said.
Kevin nodded, stepping into the hall. “I like this bathroom a lot better.”
CHAPTER 33
The next morning a new guard took Kevin to the same lavish bathroom he’d been to the night before. This time he tested the bottom shelf and found that it was sufficiently strong to bear his weight. While the fan covered what little noise Kevin made, he inventoried the items in the cabinet.
A gallon jug half full of generic ammonia, a full bottle of the Clorox bleach he’d seen last night, a spray bottle of Windex, a can of lubricating oil which was what he’d probably almost tipped over last night, two small refillable bottles of nonabrasive tile cleaner, a tube of super glue, a brown vial of iodine, a pack of Q-tips, three sponges, and a rag. That was it. Almost all of them were items he expected to find in a bathroom. The glue and oil were unusual, but he’d heard of people keeping weirder stuff in their bathrooms.
Whatever he was going to do, it would have to be with these items. MacGyver he was not, but one thing he did know was how to mix chemicals to produce an effect.
Kevin immediately saw several possibilities. He stuffed the tube of super glue into one sock and the vial of iodine into the other, knowing that they might be seen in his jeans pockets. The Q-tips might come in handy so he took 20 out of the box and put them in his underwear. He needed the ammonia too, but it would have to wait. He put away the rest of the items, flushed the toilet, and exited the bathroom.
After lunch, Kevin was able to make another trip to the bathroom. He ran the water in the sink and emptied one of the bottles of tile cleaner, which would be small enough to fit in his waistband and go unnoticed. As far from the door as he could get so that the guard wouldn’t smell the fumes, Kevin poured some of the ammonia into the bottle until it was full. After capping the ammonia and putting it away, he waved his arms to get what fumes remained sucked up by the fan. Finally, he took one of the sponges and the rag. The sponge he put down his pants, along with the bottle in his waistband. He wrapped the rag around his ankle and pulled his sock tight over it.
As usual, he flushed the toilet and began the walk toward his room. As he did so, he felt his sock inch down under his pant leg. The rag began to fall loose. It flopped against the inside of his pants, but he didn’t dare alter his walk to compensate. He felt it nudging lower and lower until, only five feet from the door, he was sure it was peeking out from the bottom of his cuff. If the guard saw it, he would check Kevin to see if he was carrying anything else and that would lead to a search of his room. Whatever hopes he had to escape would be over.
Kevin walked into the room and turned. He sighed with relief to see the bedroom door closing behind him. He finally looked down and saw the corner of the rag brushing against the floor, about half of it exposed. If the guard had looked down for any reason, he would have seen it.
Kevin picked the rag up and took the sponge and bottle of ammonia out of his pants. Then he went to the bathroom and removed the other items from under the sink. He thought about a more elaborate hiding place but decided that if they made a deliberate search of the room, no hiding place would be good enough.
He looked at the array of items before him. The guard only opened the door to bring in food, and Kevin hoped he would keep to that regimen because the desk was now covered with illicit objects. He had to work quickly to be done in time for dinner.
He spread the rag flat on the desk to protect the desk surface. The hand towel from his bathroom would have
