career change he had in mind. I opened the little door and looked up the duct. It was blacker than the back door to hell and probably narrower.
The main corridor now swung to the right, and I paused at the corner to make sure I had my bearings straight. It wasn't much fun being down there under the best of circumstances, but it would be a lot less fun if I were lost. I'd been counting not only turns but hanging light bulbs as well. When I was certain I could get back, I went on.
I found, first, a changing room, with hooks spaced on the wall at regular intervals for uniforms or street clothes, and then a bathroom with the most ungodly brown water I'd ever seen brimming over in the toilets. On the doors to the toilet stalls hung signs that said dipping pool. Each dipping pool was numbered. I wondered what got dipped in them.
I left the dipping pools behind and entered a large empty tiled room with no features at all. Every room has features, I thought, studying the walls by the light of what seemed to be a ten-watt bulb. I spotted something dark and round in the center of the floor and went over to it. A drain. When I looked up, I saw the shower heads.
The details of the morning's nightmare came back to me more vividly than I liked. I had to force myself not to look up for the gray worms as I very slowly left the room, and I tried not to acknowledge the relief I felt when the door opened in front of me.
Two empty closets and one backtrack later, I found the kitchen of the Borzoi.
It was vast and cavernous and empty. What seemed like acres of filthy wet counter stretched in every direction, lighted by the standard-issue hanging bulbs. The old gas ranges were cold and rusty, their oven doors hanging open. I didn't much think I wanted to look in the ovens.
In addition to the one I had entered through, there were four doors in the kitchen. Two opened into dish closets, still stacked high with authentic dinnerware of the twenties that Eleanor would have killed for. The third was as wide as it was high, and as heavy as it was wide. I had to use both hands to pull it open.
When I did, a wave of cold air broke over me. I had obviously found the refrigerator that had once served the kitchen, keeping the Barrymores' caviar chilled. I was holding the door open with one hand and feeling around on the inside wall for a light switch with the other, when something in there moved. Then it moved again. Then it scuttled toward me. It had at least four legs.
The largest rat in the world swam into my imagination, and I yanked my arm out and backed away so fast that I cracked my hip on the edge of a counter. The refrigerator door slowly swung shut. Whatever it was, it was going to stay inside.
The fourth door was worse.
It was narrow but tall, and it opened to reveal a dumbwaiter that in the old days had carried hot food up into the chandeliered dining room. When I tugged it open, I saw nothing but a bundle of rags that had been wadded up and thrown inside. I reached in to test the ropes, wondering if I could somehow haul myself up to ground level, and the bundle of rags stirred. A bunch of darker rags slowly lifted itself and became hair, and I was looking into the face of a woman.
A girl really; she couldn't have been more than twenty. Her face was pasty and hollow. Her eyes were black and flat, as empty and lifeless as windows into a dark room. She looked first at my face and then down at my clothes. Then she sighed and started to lower her head again.
'Honey,' I said. 'For Christ's sake, let's get out of here.' I put my hand on her shoulder, but she didn't even shrug. She was barely breathing. I shook her and got no response. I left the door open and backed away, and she reached out a slender white arm and slowly pulled the door closed again.
Getting out had become an urgent priority. I left the kitchen and backtracked the way I had come. At the cul-de-sac leading to the fire stairs I paused. Then I went into the small hallway and, avoiding the lethal bare patches on the wire in an effort not to be electrocuted, reached up and unscrewed the light bulb. I needed time to think. Mentally bidding Mr. Rat to keep his distance, I leaned against the door and listened to the water drip.
At least I'd learned what people meant when they used 'basement' as a verb. Now what I needed was to unbasement myself as quickly as possible.
In the class-conscious twenties, a hotel like the Borzoi wouldn't have subjected its guests' sensibilities to the sight of the help, people largely lacking in real style, coming and going. That meant there had to be a service entrance or two at street level, and also, since so many of the poor souls had slaved in the basement, there had to be a service elevator. And since I'd pretty much exhausted the territory to the left, it had to be to the right. Where the lights were.
I'd moved only a few steps when I heard voices. I was learning to back up very quickly, and I did it now, heading for what had become the friendly, rat-filled darkness of my cul-de-sac.
Huddled against the fire door, I watched three people pass from right to left. The first was a short, fat man dressed in drab, loose clothes. The other two were in quasi-military uniforms, faintly Italian in their spit-and-polish, and calf-high boots. As they passed, the man in the lead stared hopelessly at the floor but the man in the middle looked back, away from me, said something, and laughed. It wasn't a contagious laugh. Virulent, maybe, but not contagious.
The third man laughed too. He was carrying a bucket.
Judging from the woebegone demeanor of the man in the lead, they were probably heading for the kitchen to pop another simp on the barbie. What the hell, I figured, and followed.
But they weren't going to the kitchen. They turned left at the short corridor leading to the air conditioner. I edged along the far wall until I could see the cooling unit and the three figures in front of it.
The man who had laughed pulled open the hinged door in the duct and made an extravagant after-you- Alphonse bow. The fat little man bowed his head submissively, and the one with the bucket lifted it and poured its contents over the bowing man. Then the bowing man got onto his hands and knees and crawled into the duct.
'A little cooling-off period,' said the one who had laughed. It seemed like a well-worn joke, but the wind-chill factor in that duct must have been something for even a dry man to reckon with.
'Thank you,' said the one in the duct. He sounded like he meant it. There are more ways of being crazy than there are of being sane.
The joker closed the door, and I made a beeline for the first closet and counted to a hundred very slowly. Water dripped regularly onto my head. When I shifted my position it dripped onto my shoulder and my head. I shifted back.
I didn't hear anything outside. I eased open the door and sloshed quietly back to my cul-de-sac. The place had probably become too familiar, too safe by contrast to the rest of the labyrinth. I was backing into it when I felt something move behind me. An arm went quickly around my throat, cutting into my windpipe, and the light went on.
The guy behind me had to be the one with the bucket. And the one with the laugh, the one in front of me, was my old friend Needle-nose.
Chapter 17
'Well, gee,' I said through my constricted throat. 'Hi.'
He didn't seem to recognize me. The guy behind me tightened his chokehold to keep his interest up.
'I'm lost,' I said in a voice that sounded like Daffy Duck.
Needle-nose smiled, not a pretty sight, and lowered his hand from the light bulb. 'You certainly are,' he said. His eyes were a pale gray, flecked with brown. They weren't smiling. They flicked to meet the eyes of the one behind me, and the forearm relaxed a little. 'Perhaps there's something we could help you find.' His voice was very soft, almost girlish. The gray eyes were extravagantly fringed with sable lashes.
'I don't know,' I said. 'A Burger King?'
'A Burger King.' He considered the answer very seriously.
'I'd kill for a Whopper,' I said.
He gazed at me in the gloom. The light bulb above us swung back and forth in a tiny arc. Then the sharp tip of his nose quivered and his eyes narrowed slightly. I lowered my head as far as I could against the restraining arm, throwing my face into shadow, and hoped he'd come closer for a better look.
