Cell

the doors locked. Advised by the police. I told her to do the same thing. Lock up and keep a, you know, low profile. She begged me to come home. She said there had been gunshots on the street, and an explosion a street over. She said she had seen a naked man running through the Benzycks' yard. The Benzycks live next door to us.'

'Yes,' Tom said mildly. Soothingly, even. Clay said nothing. He was a bit ashamed at how angry he'd been at Mr. Ricardi, but Tom had been angry, too.

'She said she believed the naked man might—might, she only said might —have been carrying the body of a . . .mmm . . . nude child. But possibly it was a doll. She begged me again to leave the hotel and come home.'

Clay had what he needed. The landlines were safe. Mr. Ricardi was in shock but not crazy. Clay put his hand on the telephone. Mr. Ricardi laid his hand over Clay's before Clay could pick up the receiver. Mr. Ricardi's fingers were long and pale and very cold. Mr. Ricardi wasn't done. Mr. Ricardi was on a roll.

'She called me a son of a bitch and hung up. I know she was angry with me, and of course I understand why. But the police told me to lock up and stay put. The police told me to keep off the streets. The police. The authorities.'

Clay nodded. 'The authorities, sure.'

'Did you come by the T?' Mr. Ricardi asked. 'I always use the T. It's just two blocks down the street. It's very convenient.'

'It wouldn't be convenient this afternoon,' Tom said. 'After what we just saw, you couldn't get me down there on a bet.'

Mr. Ricardi looked at Clay with mournful eagerness. 'You see?'

Clay nodded again. 'You're better off in here,' he said. Knowing that he meant to get home and see to his boy. Sharon too, of course, but mostly his boy. Knowing he would let nothing stop him unless something absolutely did. It was like a weight in his mind that cast an actual shadow on his vision. 'Much better off.' Then he picked up the phone and punched 9 for an outside line. He wasn't sure he'd get one, but he did. He dialed 1, then 207, the area code for all of Maine, and then 692, which was the prefix for Kent Pond and the surrounding towns. He got three of the last four numbers—almost to the house he still thought of as home—before the distinctive three-tone interrupt. A recorded female voice followed. 'We're sorry. All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later.'

On the heels of this came a dial tone as some automated circuit disconnected him from Maine . . .if that was where the robot voice had been coming from. Clay let the handset drop to the level of his shoulder, as if it had grown very heavy. Then he put it back in the cradle.

13

Tom told him he was crazy to want to leave.

For one thing, he pointed out, they were relatively safe here in the Atlantic Avenue Inn, especially with the elevators locked down and lobby access from the stairwell blocked off. This they had done by piling boxes and suitcases from the luggage room in front of the door at the end of the short corridor beyond the elevator banks. Even if someone of extraordinary strength were to push against that door from the other side, he'd only be able to shift the pile against the facing wall, creating a gap of maybe six inches. Not enough to get through.

For another, the tumult in the city beyond their little safe haven actually seemed to be increasing. There was a constant racket of conflicting alarms, shouts and screams and racing engines, and sometimes the panic-tang of smoke, although the day's brisk breeze seemed to be carrying the worst of that away from them. So far, Clay thought, but did not say aloud, at least not yet—he didn't want to frighten the girl any more than she already was. There were explosions that never seemed to come singly but rather in spasms. One of those was so close that they all ducked, sure the front window would blow in. It didn't, but after that they moved to Mr. Ricardi's inner sanctum.

The third reason Tom gave for thinking Clay was crazy to even think about leaving the marginal safety of the Inn was that it was now quarter past five. The day would be ending soon. He argued that trying to leave Boston in the dark would be madness.

'Just take a gander out there,' he said, gesturing to Mr. Ricardi's little window, which looked out on Essex Street. Essex was crowded with abandoned cars. There was also at least one body, that of a young woman in jeans and a Red Sox sweatshirt. She lay facedown on the sidewalk, both arms outstretched, as if she had died trying to swim, varitek, her sweatshirt proclaimed. 'Do you think you're going to drive your car? If you do, you better think again.'

'He's right,' Mr. Ricardi said. He was sitting behind his desk with his arms once more folded across his narrow chest, a study in gloom. 'You're in the Tamworth Street Parking Garage. I doubt if you'd even succeed in securing your keys.'

Clay, who had already given his car up as a lost cause, opened his mouth to say he wasn't planning to drive (at least to start with), when another thump came from overhead, this one heavy enough to make the ceiling shiver. It was accompanied by the faint but distinctive shiver-jingle of breaking glass. Alice Maxwell, who was sitting in the chair across the desk from Mr. Ricardi, looked up nervously and then seemed to shrink further into herself.

'What's up there?' Tom asked.

'It's the Iroquois Room directly overhead,' Mr. Ricardi replied. 'The largest of our three meeting rooms, and where we keep all of our supplies—chairs, tables, audiovisual equipment.' He paused. 'And, although we have no restaurant, we arrange for buffets or cocktail parties, if clients request such service. That last thump . . .'

He didn't finish. As far as Clay was concerned, he didn't need to. That last thump had been a trolley stacked high with glassware being upended on the floor of the Iroquois Room, where numerous other trolleys and tables had already been tipped over by some madman who was rampaging back and forth up there. Buzzing around on the second floor like a bug trapped between the window and the screen, something without the wit to find a way out, something that could only run and break, run and break.

Alice spoke up for the first time in nearly half an hour, and without prompting for the first time since they'd met her. 'You said something about someone named Doris.'

'Doris Gutierrez.' Mr. Ricardi was nodding. 'The head housekeeper. Excellent employee. Probably my best. She was on three, the last time I heard from her.'

'Did she have—?' Alice wouldn't say it. Instead she made a gesture that had become almost as familiar to Clay as the index finger across the lips indicating Shh. Alice put her right hand to the side of her face with the thumb close to her ear and the pinkie in front of her mouth.

'No,' Mr. Ricardi said, almost primly. 'Employees have to leave them in their lockers while they're on the job. One violation gets them a reprimand. Two and they can be fired. I tell them this when they're taken on.' He lifted one thin shoulder in a half-shrug. 'It's management's policy, not mine.'

'Would she have gone down to the second floor to investigate those sounds?' Alice asked.

'Possibly,' Mr. Ricardi said. 'I have no way of knowing. I only know that I haven't heard from her since she reported the wastebasket fire out, and she hasn't answered her pages. I paged her twice.'

Clay didn't want to say You see, it isn't safe here, either right out loud, so he looked past Alice at Tom, trying to give him the basic idea with his eyes.

Tom said, 'How many people would you say are still upstairs?'

'I have no way of knowing.'

'If you had to guess.'

'Not many. As far as the housekeeping staff goes, probably just Doris. The day crew leaves at three, and the night crew doesn't come on until six.' Mr. Ricardi pressed his lips tightly together. 'It's an economy gesture. One cannot say measure because it doesn't work. As for guests . . .'

He considered.

'Afternoon is a slack time for us, very slack. Last night's guests have all checked out, of course—checkout time at the Atlantic Inn is noon– and tonight's guests wouldn't begin checking in until four o'clock or so, on an ordinary afternoon. Which this most definitely is not. Guests staying several days are usually here on business. As I assume you were, Mr. Riddle.'

Clay nodded without bothering to correct Ricardi on his name.