Detective Click

A small detour takes our group to the western balcony.

Considered by many to be one of the hotel’s winningest features, the balcony emerges halfway up the side of the building. The westward-facing vista gives guests a stunning panorama of our fair city, especially when the sun is low in the sky. The balcony is also quite large; it has been able to accommodate entire wedding parties, and many other festive and well-attended events.

The gigantic wooden doors that open out from the hotel onto the balcony are inset with windows, but these are kept covered with long velvet curtains. I pause in front of these curtains and wait for the visitors to accumulate. When all have finally caught up, I pull aside the curtains and throw the doors wide in one dramatic movement. A cool breeze rushes in. The curtains ruffle furiously. Most of the visitors smile. They have been feeling a little bit claustrophobic, and fresh air is just the antidote.

“Please join me outside on the balcony,” I say with a grin. They don’t have to be told twice, and spill past me in a rush.

“Do be sure to stop at the railing,” I call after them. “If you don’t, there is a bit of a drop.”

When the last visitor is through, I turn and follow them out onto the enormous cantilevered platform. All at once, it is plain that the time of day has gotten away from me. This is not uncommon, but the presence of guests usually mitigates my handicap to a certain degree. Yet as I stare out over the marble balustrade, I see that I have erred profoundly. I had so hoped to present my guests with the glistening acronychal vista of a city tinged by the last embers of sunset. However, the sun has passed away entirely. The sky is black, with no stars that I can see. All that remains is a thin blue line radiating at the horizon’s edge.

My visitors are taking it in—despite the darkness, I suppose it may not be an entirely disappointing sight—yet they cluster together in the center of the balcony and do not approach the far edge. After a moment, I realize that this is not because they are following my instructions, but because a stranger lingers there. That is, a stranger to them.

“Detective!” I beam, striding over. The visitors part to let me pass.

Detective Click remains motionless, staring silently out into the distance. With one hand he holds a freshly lit Churchill. With the other he grips the marble railing.

“We have disturbed your evening cigar,” I observe. “An unforgivable transgression. For it, you have my apologies.”

“No problem,” he says in his gravelly voice. “It’s a beautiful night.”

“Indeed,” I tell him. “Detective, as you see we have visitors. Perhaps you would like to say hello.”

For a moment he remains motionless. Then, when he moves, it is only to bring his cigar to his lips. Detective Click deliberates.

“Hey,” says an impatient voice from somewhere in the throng. “Where are all the lights?”

“Yeah,” says another. “What’s going on?”

For a moment I do not understand them. I edge my way to the railing and stare down into the nearly abject blackness below.

“They mean the city lights,” Detective Click says softly, indicating the scene with his cigar.

“Exactly,” responds a visitor. “All the buildings must have their lights off.”

“It doesn’t even look like the same city!” says another.

I turn back to the guests. Those who had not noticed the phenomenon before are certainly noticing it now. It’s true that there are no streetlights twinkling beneath us. Even the ambulatory illuminations usually thrown by automobiles are strangely absent.

I open my mouth to account for this discrepancy.

“A power failure,” Detective Click says before I can speak. He turns, now, to face the group. His thick black beard glistens in the cherry glow cast by his cigar.

“Ah, yes,” I say, smiling. “That must be it.”

“The entire western grid, I’d lay odds,” says the detective. “They ought to have it back up in a couple of hours. The folks at power and light are a bunch of jokers.”

“Because it looks like the wrong city,” one of the guests insists rather aggressively.

If there is any trait I despise, it is rudeness.

“Detective Click is one of my closest colleagues here at the Grand Hotel,” I say loudly. “A former officer on the Chicago police department, he now serves the vital function of providing our private security. He is trusted with all matters requiring discretion, and I have never known a situation in which his assessment could not be taken as the absolute gospel truth.”

“Well . . . I still think the city down there looks wrong,” the wag bleats.

“It was a night just like this when I made up my mind to leave the police force back in Chicago,” Click says. “A night like this that brought me here.”

“Oh,” I say, as if surprised (I am not surprised.). “Surely that must have been a coincidence. A power failure and your decision to leave, I mean. Power—all sorts of power—can fail unexpectedly.”

Click looks at me for a long moment.

Despite his celebrated deductive skills, Click has never shown any sign that he has discovered the real, underpinning truths of the hotel. I do not say that he has not discovered them—only that he has shown no sign. In fact, I find it likely that he has. No one spends very long within these walls—especially alone, as Click often is—without a few things becoming bracingly clear. I can tell that Click is deeply and innately clever. Perhaps he is clever enough to understand that some mysteries are better off left alone.

Click takes another puff on his cigar and begins to speak.

There used to be a house just off 47th Street on the south side of Chicago in a neighborhood called Kenwood. It had a high circular turret on one corner. I did an overnight job there. It looked abandoned, but the police department had rented it to keep tabs on a drug gang next door. From the top window of that turret, you could see right into their house.

I was in narcotics. I had a partner named Lindale. He was a real piece of work. Looked like a buffalo in a gun belt. He was older than me, but had been demoted twice for shooting his mouth off. He always said he envied the Chicago cops of the 1960s who got to beat hippie kids at the DNC, and the cops of the 1910s who had truncheoned people—black and white, but mostly black—during the race riots. He’d been born too late, he always said.

Lindale had problems.

We got assigned to the overnight shift on the house in Kenwood. The thing had started as a short-term bust, but that changed when half the south side gang leaders started showing up for meetings there. No longer was the plan to charge in and get a few collars and hold up some drugs for the TV cameras. Now the idea was to wait for the next meeting of the kingpins. Catch them all at once and decapitate a bunch of gangs simultaneously.

Lindale and I heard bad things about the house from the start. I didn’t think much of it, because the complaints mostly came from slackers and bellyachers. Guys and gals who just wanted to meet their quota and go park underneath a tree and take a nap. Those kind of cops.

They said that the house was “fucked up.” That it gave you “the heebie jeebies.” Probably, I thought, this was simply code for a place where it was hard to not do actual police work.

I remember the moment Lindale and I first walked inside. Our shift started at eleven at night. We brought coffee and snacks. In the car on the way over, we tried to keep our spirits high. When we got there though, the faces of the cops we relieved said it all. They were oyster-eyed and dour. They wordlessly brushed past into the hot summer night, just happy to get out of there.

We settled in and tried to get comfortable.

“What do you think the problem is with this place?” I asked Lindale. “Everybody talks bad about this assignment.”

“Well . . . to start, it’s hot,” Lindale observed thoughtfully, sipping his coffee. “No A/C.”

“We want the gangsters to think it’s abandoned,” I said. “Of course there’s no A/C.”

“It smells bad, too,” Lindale observed.

He was right he house had that old, ghetto smell you reliably found in public housing.

Until recently, Chicago had kept most of its poor in high rise developments. Places like Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes. The social scientists had thought they would provide a good option for poor families with no place else to go. Instead, they concentrated poverty and hopelessness and violence. Made it all worse.

At the end of the last century, the sociologists finally wised up. They realized that you wanted to do the opposite of what the high rises had done. You wanted to sprinkle the public housing in little apartments all over the city. Don’t let it concentrate and feed on itself. Keep it isolated so it can’t get momentum.

In the early 2000s, the city knocked down all of the high rises. Moved the residents to smaller buildings throughout Chicago. It was a tremendous and sudden displacement.

“Do ya think this was one of those houses?” Lindale said, reading my thoughts. “One of the places where they moved . . . those people?”

Lindale was a man who did not try to hide his disdain for the poor.

“Could be,” I said.

We sat and drank our coffee and watched the house next door. There was very little to see. Mostly, I thought about the weird smell.

“Do ya think it’s coming from the walls?” Lindale asked at one point. “I feel like it’s coming from inside the walls.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

I didn’t really have an opinion on the matter.

A little after one o’clock, I walked to the back of the house to take a piss. I was thinking about what Lindale had said about the walls. In the back of the house, where the john was, the smell was even stronger.

On my way back, I stopped to look in the kitchen. It was empty, with no tables or chairs. There was a stove that looked like it might explode if you turned it on. I saw cockroaches scuttling in the corners.

The wallpaper in the kitchen was peeling, especially above the range. I thought maybe it was from the radiant heat over all the years. I stood there and picked at the wallpaper absently. I brought some of it up to my nose and smelled it. Lindale was right. It was the walls.

No wonder the other cops didn’t like being here.

I turned around to leave the kitchen and heard a voice. Clear as day. Clear as you’re hearing me now.

“I know your type,” it said. “I plugged him at the Ludlow Room. He died easy.”

The accent was out of a different time, like someone doing a bad gangster impression.

I looked around for the TV or radio that was obviously on. Detecting nothing, I called to the front:

“Hey Lindale, you hear that?”

“Hear what?” he whisper-shouted back.

I looked all around. Nothing. Was one of the cops from an earlier shift messing with us?

I crept back to our perch by the window.

“Somebody left his radio back there,” I said to Lindale. “Or a phone. I heard it talking.”

Lindale nodded and looked into his coffee. He peered into its murky brown depths like a seer convinced it might hold portent.

We looked across the street at the house. A light went on, then abruptly shut off. There was no traffic. Some clouds spread over the moon, and suddenly it was very dark.

Then, behind us, I heard the voice again.

I thought maybe only I had heard it, but when I raised my head, Lindale was looking at me.

“That was a voice, right?” I asked.

Lindale appeared uneasy, but nodded.

“Somebody’s radio,” I continued. “Or a TV or something. It sounded like an old gangster movie.”

Lindale put his hand on his service weapon, and crept to the back of the darkened apartment.

“Right there by the kitchen,” I told him. “It’s coming from somewhere around there.”

Lindale returned empty handed.

“Smells awful,” he said.

“It’s the walls,” I told him. “There was a section where the wallpaper peeled off. It’s really bad.”

“Ludlow Room,” Lindale said.

“Huh?” I said.

“It sounded like the voice was saying something about the Ludlow Room.”

“Yeah,” I told him.

Lindale relaxed.

“Must have been an old movie, then,” he said. “My grandpa used to talk about the Ludlow Room. It was right around here, but eighty years ago. Some kinda pool hall.”

A few minutes later, we heard the voice again. Lindale was talking, so we missed what it said. It sounded as if someone were right there, ten or fifteen paces behind us.

Lindale stopped talking and we looked at one another.

“Maybe the lighting fixture?” he said. “Or the wiring? Sometimes it can pick up radio stations.”

A sudden movement across the street caught my eye. Lindale saw it too. One of the dealers had eased himself outside. He was looking anxiously down the block like he was expecting somebody.

A few moments later a car pulled up. The driver gave a signal, and the man reached through the passenger window and took out something that looked an awful lot like a stick of dynamite.

Lindale had time to say: “Is that. . . ?”

The man hurled the stick through the window of the drug house and it exploded. Moments later, there were gunshots from inside. The driver stuck a MAC-10 out of his window and sprayed the front door when someone tried to open it.

Our radio started squawking like crazy. Lindale drew his weapon and galloped toward the back of the house. I kind of watched him go. I tried to stand up but instead fell to one knee. I looked down and saw a single bullet hole low on my abdomen.

I eased myself over onto my side. Then everything went black.

Power failures happen in the summers in Chicago . . . especially in poorer neighborhoods where the grids aren’t good. Enough people running their window units at full blast, and—boom—a ten block radius goes down for the rest of the night. It took me a few seconds to realize that was what had happened.

Outside, it went to total chaos real quick. I could hear an automatic, and at least three distinct handguns.

The energy went out of my body, and I kind of curled up. I tried to turn my head toward the doorway. I hoped that if some paramedics came in, I would be able to see them and call out.

After a few seconds, the shooting quieted down. One final braaaaaaappp from the MAC-10 and it ceased completely. I could already hear sirens in the distance. With my free hand, I put pressure on the hole in my gut.

Then I heard someone trudging up the wooden stairs. I didn’t think it was likely to be the gangsters, but I fingered my Glock just in case.

The footsteps reached the top step, and a shadowy figure loomed into view. With all the electric lights and streetlights dead, it was very difficult to see. I began to bring up my weapon—which had somehow become ponderously heavy—but stopped when I figured out it was Lindale. He took a few cautious steps into the room and the moonlight hit him in the face. He wore an expression like he’d just seen his parents having sex.

“Lindale,” I called.

He didn’t respond. The summer breeze blew through the shattered window and rustled the curtains above me. He said nothing. Didn’t even look at me.

Lindale walked to a low bench at the side of the room and sat down. It took me a few moments to realize that he was dead.

The sirens outside drew closer. So many sirens. Like the whole Twenty-First District was descending.

Then there was indistinct movement from the back of the house. I squinted and rubbed my eyes. I was really fading now. Blood was pooling on the floor underneath me. It was a challenge just to hold my head up.

But I still saw them.

A group of five or six people, all men. I could barely make them out. Something told me I could have shined a flashlight straight through them if I’d had one.

The men walked over to Lindale. He kept his head low, like he didn’t want to look up at them. They were a strange crew. A couple wore dirty suits and fedoras. One was dressed like an old-time policeman in a plain blue uniform with big gold buttons. Another appeared to be a contemporary gang member, with tattoos up his neck and a bandanna around his head.

They stood beside Lindale. The two men in suits gripped him under the armpits. Lindale didn’t resist, but neither did he seem entirely to understand what was happening. They helped him up. It was like watching a concussed athlete getting taken off the field. Slowly—careful step after careful step—they walked him into the darkness at the back of the house.

Lindale looked over at me once. His eyes met mine. His expression held a terror beyond what I can describe. Then the antiquated policeman gripped his chin hard and turned Lindale’s head to face forward again. Then the policeman looked at me. Where he should have had eyes were just holes.

Lindale and the strange group disappeared into the darkness. A few moments later, the lights outside flickered and turned back on. I heard footsteps and a uniformed policeman ran up the staircase with his weapon drawn. I used every bit of strength I had left to call out a nonsense syllable and hold up my shield.

I woke up in the hospital. Some officers led my wife into the room. I hugged her and we both cried. The officers told me my partner “didn’t make it.” I said I knew that already. A few hours later, the police superintendent and the mayor showed up and shook my hand. The superintendent was stoic and boring, but the mayor was fun and got me to crack a smile. I guess that’s how you get to be mayor.

It was a month before I got up the guts to tell my wife what happened.

“Don’t say anything to the people you work with,” was her immediate response.

I nodded. If I said I’d seen ghosts, I might have to go in for a psych evaluation.

“But is there anyone I can talk to?” I asked her. “I’ve met some of those local ‘ghost hunter’ people before. They don’t seem like real experts. I want a real expert.”

My wife put her chin on her fist like she always did when she was thinking hard. Then she said: “What about Alec Kuttlewitz?”

“Who?” I said, knitting my brow. That name was familiar.

My wife reminded me that Kuttlewitz was a local author who’d become famous by writing books about life in Chicago’s toughest housing projects.

“If anybody’s seen things in those neighborhoods, it’s him,” my wife said.

I decided it was worth a shot.

Kuttlewitz had become a professor at the University of Chicago. I looked on the school website and found his address and office hours. I wanted to go in person. Years of police work had taught me that a cop standing in your doorway was harder to ignore than an email.

I went the next day, arriving at Kuttlewitz’s office just as a student was leaving. Kuttlewitz was middle aged and wore thin, John Lennon glasses. He had two tufts of hair on the sides of his head, but was otherwise bald. The shelves of his office were filled with copies of his bestselling books. He apparently liked to keep the place dark; the only electric light came from the computer monitor.

“Professor Kuttlewitz?” I asked. “I’m Sergeant John Click from the CPD. Do you have a moment?”

He smiled and said he did. I rested my crutches against the wall and sat down.

“Did you happen to hear about the shootout near 47th and Greenwood a month ago?” I asked. “CPD officer killed. Another gutshot?”

“Oh gee, it was during summer exams . . . but yes, I remember,” he said, nodding.

“I was the one gutshot,” I told him.

He looked sympathetic for a moment. Then his eyes searched their sockets as he strained to remember more details.

“Quite a few young men were also killed that evening—some by Chicago police—as I understand,” Kuttlewitz said icily. “You neglect to mention them, I note.”

This was the point where I would normally keep asking questions to stay in control of the conversation. But—as the ivy-covered walls outside reminded me—Kuttlewitz wasn’t a perp and this wasn’t a traffic stop. I couldn’t make him tell me anything he didn’t want to.

“That’s correct,” I answered. “I didn’t shoot anybody, though. I was hit right at the start of things. Never even drew my gun.”

The writer frowned as though this made little difference.

“What can I help you with, Sergeant?” he asked. “What’s the reason for this visit? Did you absolutely need to see me in person?”

Now he was the one trying to question me to death. Perhaps he knew the tactic. The thought made me smile.

“I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” I told him.

“Oh?” he said.

I took another glance over at Kuttlewitz’s wall of books.

“I’m here today because when my partner was killed in that shootout, I saw his ghost,” I said. “We were in a strange old house, and we’d been hearing voices there all night. When my partner died, these ghosts kind of showed up and took him away.”

Kuttlewitz said nothing.

“I came here because you’re supposed to be an expert on the south side of Chicago,” I continued. “In all the research you’ve done—all the years you’ve spent in the roughest parts of the city—did you ever see anything like that?”

Kuttlewitz looked straight ahead. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and reconsidered. Then opened it again.

“Sergeant . . . I’m a professor of creative writing,” he said, as if this fact should end the matter. “I use this office to talk to students about their stories and poems.”

“I’m just asking for information,” I told him. “Like maybe you saw something once—in a house or in a housing project—that wasn’t part of your research. So you might not have written it down. It’s not useful to your books, right? But here’s the thing: it might be useful to me.”

Kuttlewitz took off his tiny glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb.

“Of course I’ve seen things, Sergeant,” he said quietly, like a man resigned. “Of course I have. Why would you even need to ask?”

“Like what?” I pressed.

“As you say, it’s not part of my research. It’s not part of yours either, bye-the-bye. Some things on the south side . . . it’s not going to do you any good to go digging them up.”

“But . . . you . . .” I stammered. “If you’ve seen things, can you please tell me? Were they like what I saw? Am I crazy?”

If the lights in Kuttlewitz’s office had been on instead of off—or if there had been slightly more sun shining through the two large windows—I would have completely missed the thing that happened next.

The writer’s face contorted in annoyance. He furrowed his brow and frowned. As he did this, a distinctive red light began to emanate from his eye sockets. At first, I mistook it for the reflection of his computer monitor. But no. He had turned around. The monitor was behind him now. There were discernibly beams of red light coming out from his eyes.

“These things go deeper than you know,” Kuttlewitz whispered. “It is not your place to ask why things happen here. Know your place, little policeman. Go back to wherever you are from.”

I sat there, looking into his glowing eyes. They were like small, red coals left in the fire on an overcast day. After a few moments, I stood and collected my crutches. Then I ambled back to my car.

Weeks passed, then months. Eventually I went back on the beat. My new partner was a talkative, rail-thin lesbian named Martha. She was nice. I tried not to think about Lindale more than I had to.

I’d like to say that having a murder in a building would keep anybody from wanting to rent it out, but that’s not the case in Chicago. Eventually, though, other forces conspired to undo the place where Lindale died. Suddenly the nation had a president who lived just a few blocks away. Developers wanted to tear down the old house and put up some mixed-use buildings. Pretty soon, that was what they did. The local alderman came and made a speech. It was a big to-do.

A few months after that, I started hearing about what they found when they knocked the place down. Bodies in the walls . . . generations of bodies. Apparently there had been an opening up in the attic where you could drop something—like a corpse—into a crawlspace that ran down between the rooms. Chicago gangsters had being using it since before Capone. They found bodies in there that went back to the 1800s.

When I learned about this, I asked my wife: “Where do the ghosts go when you knock down a haunted house?”

She shrugged and said: “Where did the people go when they knocked down the housing projects?”

I think she had a point. I’m still not sure what it is.

Detective Click takes a long draw on his cigar and falls silent. A gentle breeze blows across the balcony from the dark vista beyond.

“Well, that took a long time,” one visitor whispers.

Almost in the same instant, the lights in the city beneath us come back on. The entire party appears cheered by this development.

“There, you see?” I announce reassuringly. “The detective was right, just as he always is. Our municipal engineers now have the matter well in hand.”

The group surveys the illumination below.

“Undoubtedly, we have distracted the good detective for long enough,” I continue. “The view from this balcony is certainly beautiful, but I think you’ll also enjoy the Grand Hotel’s reception room. We’ll head there next. It doubles as our portrait gallery. While it may lack the majesty of an outdoor setting, some of the portraiture has been known to elicit quite powerful responses from visitors.”

I stride over to the doors leading back inside and extend my hand. Most of the group takes the hint and shuffles through. One or two stragglers linger next to Detective Click at the railing.

“I’m just not sure,” one of them says. “It doesn’t look like the same city from up here, even with the lights back on.”

“A trick of perspective,” I offer. “Consider how different things look from the window of an airplane.”

“Yes, but . . .” the visitor tries.

“I’m quite sure that’s what it is,” I insist more forcefully. “Now run along, or you may be left behind.”

The tarrying visitors take one final, doubtful look over the railing. Then they relent and follow the others back inside.

I give Click a nod. He hesitates, then returns it.

Good old Click.

Once more inside the hotel, I direct the group down the hall toward the doors to the reception room. They swing freely on their hinges, like the entrance to a Western saloon.

“I had a professor with red eyes, once,” a member of the group confides. “Suffered from albinism, poor chap. Very sad.”

“Oh!” another announces brightly. “Why my cat has the very same condition.”

The two smile at one another. In their tiny minds, a bond has been created. I am not above being amused by this, though the pleasure is passing at best.

Then I turn and see the red-haired girl standing next to me. She is smiling as well.

“Did you like Detective Click?” I inquire.

We pause at the doors to the reception room and allow the rest of the group to file past.

“He seemed like a perfectly nice man,” she answers. “I think he’s confused by his own story, though. He’s turning it over in his mind. I bet he figures it out eventually.”

I smile.

“I have no doubt that the walls of many Chicago buildings contain bodies,” I tell her. “It is a bare, bleak city, with murder often on its mind. I’m sure Click saw much of that in his time as a patrolman. The portion of his tale concerning the writer is difficult to credit, however.”

“Yes,” the girl replies without hesitation. “But even if that part’s exaggerated, Kuttlewitz is still the villain.”

The breath nearly goes out of me.

“Truly?” I ask in an astonished tone (I am less astonished than impressed.).

“Yes,” the red-haired girl responds.

“Why?” I ask. “All he did was sit at his desk.”

She thinks.

“Because he’s . . . fundamentally uninterested in assigning blame.”

I cross my arms and frown at her, as if this reply is close to being inappropriate.

“I mean . . . it’s not nice to blame people for things,” she adds quickly. “It’s not polite. But maybe if you’re at a university, it’s part of what you’re supposed to do. Kuttlewitz writes books about problems in the poor part of town, but he never says who created the problems. The leaders and politicians and whoever. He never points to the people who benefit from keeping the poor people poor. He just . . . I don’t know . . . says that bad things are bad.”

“So maybe he should be a bit meaner?” I wonder, uncrossing my arms. “Meaner . . . and more specific?”

The red-haired girl nods vigorously and smiles.

“I think he makes people feel like the problems will always be there, and you can’t do anything about them. But really, you can . . . if you’re impolite and point out who is causing them.”

I say nothing, but nod thoughtfully.

“Are you okay?” the red-haired girl asks.

“Perfectly fine,” I assure her, though my voice is distant.

“I thought I might have said something wrong.”

“You did not.”

“Oh,” she says. “Good.”

“I was just thinking . . . it might be fun if you and I played a little game—going forward—for the rest of the tour. Would you like that?”

“What kind of game?” she asks. Her tone indicates caution, but her grin tells me that she is nonetheless intrigued.

“How about this . . .” I begin. “After every stop on our tour, I get to ask you a question. It will be a question about something we have just seen or heard. If you give me the right answer, then everything is fine and the tour continues. Unfortunately, if you give me the wrong answer, I shall have to end the tour then and there. Though that shouldn’t be too much of a disappointment, I hope. At this point, you’ve already seen the hotel’s best features. Going forward, I’m afraid it gets a little bit . . . obscure.”

“If I’m wrong, does the tour end just for me,” she asks, “or for everybody?”

“Oh, it will end for everyone,” I tell her.

“That sounds like a big responsibility,” she says.

“Well, if you are not up to it . . .” I begin with a sigh.

“I’m definitely up to it,” she replies confidently. “This will be fun. I’ll see how long I can keep the tour going for.”

Despite her decision to end a sentence with a preposition, I am pleased with her enthusiasm.

“Exactly,” I tell her. “And if you keep the tour going all the way to the end . . .”

“Yes?” she says expectantly.

I smile.

“There will be special reward,” I say.

“What kind of reward?” she asks.

“I think that by the end of the tour—if we get that far—you will probably be able to guess what it is.”

This seems to please her. With no prompting, she strides through the swinging doors and into the reception room. I watch her go. A shiver runs though me that has nothing to do with the night air.

Now it begins in earnest.

It has been years since I’ve had a real contestant for this game—ages—but it all comes back to me now. Very like riding a bicycle. You get right back on.

If the girl answers me incorrectly, it is over. For all of them. Everything ends.

But if she continues to get things right—to see the point of the places and people I am showing her—well . . . that is almost too exciting to think about.

Thus galvanized, I take a deep breath and stride purposefully into the reception room where the tour group is waiting.