Hair spray?
I smelled hair spray. My time in the labyrinth had sharpened my senses. I smelled the chemical banana smell of hair spray and then I realized that the darkness was no longer absolute. That I couldn’t quite see anything but looking was less hopeless. Then there was light. I saw a thin pinstripe of light at floor level. I inched to it. No hurry. Don’t gain anything by being sudden at the end. There was no moat. No monsters, not at least on my side of the door. I reached it and touched it. The line from beneath it seemed all one would ever need, after my time in the tunnel. I ran my hand slowly over the surface. It was smooth and metallic. Like a fire door. With a knob. I pressed my ear against the door and listened. I could hear a quiet hum, the kind a refrigerator makes, or a dishwasher on dry cycle. Maybe also a sound of voice or music, too faint, but there was something besides the quiet hum. I touched the .357 in its shoulder holster and changed my mind and left it there, under my arm, inside my jacket. No one expected an intruder. If I went in quietly they might not notice. Or they might. In which case I could then take out the gun. I took hold of the knob and turned it. The door opened and I stepped through the looking glass.
CHAPTER 53
I WAS IN A CLOTHES CLOSET. THE DOOR WHEN I stepped through it was a full-length mirror on the other side. I felt along the edge and found the latch and felt along the jamb where the door fitted and found the release. I closed the door and it fit smoothly against the wall and looked simply like a full-length mirror. The smell of hair spray was stronger. I tried the catch and the door released smoothly. I shut it again. If I had to go out that way hurriedly I needed to know how the door opened. I tried it again. It worked. I closed it again and moved toward the front of the closet. It was a big one, a deep walk-in with women’s clothes hanging along both sides. It was the clothes that gave off the scent of hair spray. The front of the closet was a louvered door. I listened through it. The hum was still there. The sound I’d heard below the hum was a television set. I listened for movement, breathing, sound. The television was tuned to a game show. But the sounds of a game show are not human sounds.
There was no movement outside the closet. I opened the door. I was in a bedroom. A woman’s bedroom, obviously. There were two twin beds in there. One was neatly made, in fact immaculately made. Hospital corners, bounce a quarter on the taut gray blanket. The other was unmade, a huge aqua-colored puff was turned back in a sloppy triangle, aqua flowered sheets were rumpled and a pillow with an aqua slip was rumpled and stained with mascara and lipstick. A stiffly ribbed girdle complete with garters was draped over the foot of the bed and a pair of stockings, not panty hose, but stockings that went with garters, was bunched on the floor. The floor was carpeted in lavender. Nice, I thought. Nice with the aqua. There was a heavy mahogany bureau with curving drawers. The top was covered with makeup and perfume bottles and big rollers and several prescription drug containers, the amber kind with the childproof caps that only strong men can open. There was a television set on a stand next to the bureau, but it was silent. The game show came from the next room. Above the bureau was a mahogany-framed mirror and on walls to either side of the beds were portraits of big-eyed children. On the left wall a door opened into a bathroom. There was no one in the bathroom. I stepped to the bathroom door. It was ajar. Two nightgowns, one pink, one yellow, hung from a hook on the back of the door.
It had to be Jerry and Grace Costigan’s bedroom. But except for the scrupulously made bed there was no sign of Jerry. Unless I read it wrong and Jerry was sleeping on the aqua sheets in the unmade bed. And wearing a corset and stockings. I edged my head around the door and looked into the next room. It was empty. The television was tuned loudly to a soap opera. If a soap opera plays in an empty room, does it make a sound? I moved across the room full of wing chairs and overstuffed couches and out through the far door and left the slow-phrased agony of the soap behind me. The room I entered was the living room, leather furniture, Oriental rugs, brass, walnut, and, like all the subterranean rooms, low-domed. To the right an archway into the dining room, to the left a solid metal door. I went for the metal door and was out in a domed, bright corridor. It probably looked just like the dark one I’d felt my way through to get here, except it was lit. Ahead the tunnel widened enough for a desk to be set up. On the desk was a telephone and a looseleaf notebook in a blue leather binder. Behind the desk, facing away from me, was a big dark-haired guy in a white short-sleeved shirt with a shoulder holster on. The family receptionist. As I walked toward him he turned and stared at me.
“I came in last night,” I said. “With Russell.” The gun in the shoulder holster was a Browning .45 automatic.
“Nobody told me,” the guard said.
I shrugged. “You know Russell,” I said.
The guard made a small half laugh and nodded. “Everybody does,” he said.
I grinned. “Jerry wants to see me,” I said. “Which way?”
“Probably in the office,” the guard said. “Second door, down the tunnel, speak to the guard.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Place is a real maze, isn’t it.”
“First visit?”
“Yeah.”
“Takes a while,” the guard said. “You’ll get used to it.”
I made a friendly salute, put my hands in my hip pockets so he wouldn’t see the blackjack sticking out, and sauntered on down the tunnel. Periodically there were the blank steel doors cut into the steel tube. I opened the second one, into another tunnel, and headed on down. Out of sight of the guard I tucked the blackjack into my belt, under the T-shirt, and zipped the jacket halfway up so the bulge wouldn’t show.
The corridor was long and straight with a dwindling perspective. There were doors punctuating it too. As I walked along, looking like a friendly visitor, I figured that the layout must be a series of chambers connected by tunnels. Always the low hum of the life-support machinery made a quiet white sound, which probably no one heard once they’d been in here a day or so. Ahead was a crossway where two tunnels intersected. In the widened area was another guard. He had on a work shirt and cords. His gun was a big Colt magnum in a western-style holster.
“I’m staying with Russell,” I said. “And Jerry wants me to come to the office.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said. “You know the way?”
“No, Russell and I just came in last night. I haven’t got a clue.”
The guard smiled. “It’s confusing at first,” he said. “Jerry’s down this tunnel. Third door on the right.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” the guard said.
