Melinda’s party had done more than simply spill out and into the corridor. It served as an inspiration for other festivities as well. Some couples who had met there, many for the first time, took their wild and frivolous flirtations down to more private quarters. Others spent their passions in whatever free spaces they could find. All caution had been abandoned.
When Manny came upon the raucous gathering, he experienced a rather childlike excitement. He wanted it all and he wanted it now. An older, rather buxom woman had stripped down to her panties. She stood on a chair just inside the suite where Manny could see her and did a beaten-down imitation of a fading burlesque queen at a second-rate roadside tavern. A half dozen men were at her feet, gazing up at her Jell-O-like breasts as they wobbled in the mold. Their shoulders and heads bobbed and weaved in drunken synchronization with her every move.
When Charlotte peeked in, her first impulse was to run away. It was as though she feared another sort of contamination. In the past few years she had seen some wild things at Catskill resorts but certainly never anything that could compare to this. Had everyone, including herself, gone mad? Manny laughed and held her arm even tighter.
“This is more like it,” he said, licking his lips. “A man could forget his troubles for sure at a gathering like this.”
For Charlotte, the noise and the activity was more than she had bargained for. Combined with the booze she had already consumed it made her feel wobbly, dizzy and even a bit nauseated. She continued to hesitate.
“C’mon,” Manny said again, tugging her forward. He pressed between two dancing couples and pulled her along behind him. She stumbled over something and looked down at a naked man crawling along the floor laughing hysterically. No one paid any attention.
“Wait,” she started to say, but Manny’s grip was as fierce as his desire. They stopped in the middle of the crowd, just to the right of the woman doing her imitation. Manny stared up at her and studied her body with religious fascination.
“I want to get out of here,” Charlotte said. The sweet rum and Cokes were beginning to get to her. She swallowed hard to keep the syrupy liquid down but the combined odor of cigarettes, sweat and pungent whiskeys was devastating. The acidlike liquid moved up into her mouth and burned her tongue. She began to choke on it but there was so much noise no one even noticed, least of all the hypnotized Manny.
The woman on the chair stopped her dance. Immediately one of the worshippers at her feet stood up, scooped her in his arms and carried her deeper into the suite toward Melinda’s bedroom. As Manny’s gaze followed, he saw a familiar dress, a familiar pair of legs and hips barely visible between some strangers. He looked harder toward the corner of the room and spotted her.
Flo was seated on the floor beside the lifeguard, his head planted comfortably between her breasts. Her slip was up well over her knees and the lifeguard had his right hand placed temptingly between her thighs. Flo’s eyes were closed but the lifeguard’s were concentrated on his fingers.
Manny dropped Charlotte’s hand abruptly and pushed his way roughly through the crowd. Some people complained and one man even kicked him in the rear, but he was so obsessed he didn’t notice or feel it. He pushed three people out of his path and finally stood just above Flo and the lifeguard. Fury overwhelmed him. The New York money problems, the frustration and embarrassment of his aborted escape and now this. The fucking, slut bitch, screwing around with a younger guy in front of all these people as if her husband—as if Manny Goldberg—didn’t even exist. The fact that he was there for the same reason didn’t make any difference.
His anger got the better of him. He kicked out and caught the lifeguard in the forehead, grazing it. The lifeguard jumped up in shock, for a second not realizing what was happening. Flo opened her eyes and looked up with a dazed expression.
“Get the fuck up,” Manny screamed. His mouth strained at the corners, pulling his nostrils wide. All the veins in his temples were visibly outlined under the skin. His fists were clenched; his teeth bared.
“What the …” The lifeguard felt his forehead and looked for blood.
“YOU BASTARD!” Flo screamed.
Manny reached down and took a handful of her hair. He began pulling her to her feet. The lifeguard, his senses regained, grabbed Manny’s wrist.
“Let her go.”
“Bug off, schmuck.”
The lifeguard responded with a well-aimed hard and fast swinging right. His fist crashed into the side of Manny’s head, catching him in the left temple. His head practically spun around but he still didn’t release his grip on Flo’s hair. She screamed with the pain and bit into his wrist. Despite all the chaos, no one tried to break the fight up—they were too caught up in their own sexual pyrotechnics. Flo suddenly kicked her foot up and caught Manny’s groin with her heel. He bellowed and released her, and the lifeguard took advantage of his pain and landed a fist in his kidney. “I’ll teach you who to call ‘schmuck.’ “ Manny toppled over to his right into a crowd of dancers, who immediately moved out of his way.
The fight was quick, but Charlotte had been close enough to catch it all. A very slight, thin line of blood had formed on the lifeguard’s forehead and the sight of it plus Manny’s rolling in agony on the floor finished off all her resistance. What remained of her rum and cokes came charging up and out. A woman standing nearby felt the wetness on the back of her stockings and turned in time to see Charlotte deliver another heave. The woman screamed and put her hands to her ears. Her action caught the attention of people nearby. Charlotte heaved a third time and the crowd began pulling back.
Flo and her lifeguard moved quickly to the exit. The bedlam caused by Charlotte’s vomiting was just what they needed to cover their escape. Manny struggled to his feet but a group around him, annoyed that he had created a disturbance, formed a circle with him in the center and every time he tried to get up, pushed him back flat on his ass. Very little of this traveled into the second bedroom where Melinda was still holding court.
By the time Manny had bulldozed his way out, someone had already helped Charlotte out of the room and Flo had disappeared. He cursed and swung out wildly, making a path for himself. By the time he got out in the corridor, there was no one in sight. For a moment he considered running down the hall and smashing his fist on every door until he found Flo and her lover and made them pay for his humiliation.
But after a few minutes the impulse subsided and his rage settled down. Some loud laughter caught his attention. Another woman was up on the chair and this time the people around her were encouraging her to play with herself. She slowly let her fingers crawl down from her belly and was greeted with cheers and jeers. Manny wiped the side of his head. It still hurt, but it wasn’t bad enough to take him out of the ball game. He looked back down the corridor, considered his options and turned back to the party.
He would take care of his bitch wife later, he thought, and worked to get a better position by the chair and the girl.
At first Nick didn’t quite understand what Melinda’s boy was doing crouched down like that. He was in the corner of the basement where all the stage flats and scenery were built and all the supplies stored. There was no one else around, the work on the staging for the July fourth weekend entertainment having already been completed. Various props and stage pieces were stacked and lined up near the wall. Shelves held cans of paint, dyes and rolls of crepe paper.
Grant squatted at the base of a cloth flat that had been painted and repainted many times. He held a lighted match to the material. The small flame seemed to leap off its tip as it quickly seized hold of the dry surface. Instantly a brown hole formed and began to expand. A steady stream of smoke rose up and Grant moved to another flat and repeated the maneuver. Although it, too, caught fire rather quickly, the flame was blocked once it worked its way from the material to the frame. Frustrated, Grant looked about frenetically for a way to satisfy his desire for a more demonstrable blaze; a way to symbolically send Sandi and his mother up in flames.
He spotted a rag in a dye pot and lifted it out. Holding it in his left hand, he lit it from the bottom. A blue-red flame rose so quickly it was as if the fire had been stored in the dirty rag itself, just waiting to be released. He was pleased with the way it looked and flung it into a cardboard wishing well a few feet away. It was at this point that Nick stepped out from behind the corner of the basement wall.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Grant jumped back.
“Nothin’.”
“Nothin’? You dumb little bastard. I’ve been standing right over here watching you. What the hell …” He stepped on the burning cinders that had resulted from the fire on the flats. “I think we better get you upstairs.”
“Don’t you touch me,” Grant said as Nick stepped forward. Nick stopped and smiled at him, hoping the smile would allay some of the boy’s anxiety. “I saw you. I saw you with that man upstairs.”
Very slowly, the smile left Nick’s face. Grant took another step back, his eyes fixed on Nick as though by magnetic force.
“What man?”
“The man in the penthouse. I was on the fire escape before and I looked in the window. I saw him and I saw you too. So you just keep away from me.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What is it exactly that you saw?” Grant didn’t respond. He simply continued to stare. “I think we’d better get you up to your mother. C’mon.” Nick took another step forward and Grant backed further away. He looked behind him and saw his path was blocked somewhat by props, stage furniture and more flats.
“NO,” Grant screamed. “If you touch me, I’ll tell people everything I know.”
Nick stopped again. He was beginning to get angry.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, kid. I was never up in any penthouse. All I know is you tried to start a fire down here.”
“You were, too, up in the penthouse. I saw you. There was a man in there sitting in the middle of the floor with blood on his shirt and he didn’t move the entire time I was peering in. And you were there wiping stuff off the doorknobs with a handkerchief.” Grant wasn’t completely sure what it all meant, but he instinctively knew that it was enough information to place Nick Martin in fear of him. Nick’s hesitation confirmed this. Grant began to be more confident. He relaxed somewhat and started to get cocky. “I coulda told the cop who caught me on the fire escape, but I didn’t. I didn’t tell nobody. Yet,” he added, almost smirking.
“Well,” Nick said, seeming to relax. Reaching nonchalantly into his pocket and taking out a cigarette lighter and case he offered one to Grant, who turned him down. Grant eyed the space between Nick and the wall. He considered making a dash past him and then down the corridor to the elevators. Nick put a cigarette into his mouth and lit it, moving just slightly toward the wall as he did so. It was if he anticipated Grant’s idea. “You’re quite a guy, aren’t you? Quite the big shot.”
“Go to hell,” Grant said. Nick smiled and nodded.
“Okay then, let’s make a deal. You keep your mouth shut about what you saw upstairs and I’ll forget what you were trying to do down here. Whaddya say?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “You think about it.”
The rag Grant had tossed into the fake wishing well had set fire to its bottom by now and the sides began to snap as the flames built up from within. Both stared at it transfixed.
“We’d better do something about that, though,” Nick said. “See if there’s a water faucet in there,” he ordered, gesturing toward the boiler room a few feet away. Grant followed his gaze with his eyes but he didn’t move. “C’mon, move it, or we’ll get a load of people down here, and we’ll both have a lot of explaining to do.”
Reluctantly Grant moved toward the doorway of the room. He pushed the door open and looked inside. Nick moved so quickly and stealthily that when his forearm appeared under Grant’s chin and pressed against his Adam’s apple, the kid had no chance to react. In an instant, he was literally lifted off his feet.
The cutoff of air was immediate and complete, but it was the powerful and abrupt twist of the head that did the fatal damage. Grant’s neck snapped like a piece of brittle candy. Unsupported, his head fell forward, his tongue extended. His last image was a dazzling, sparkling prism filled with neon stars. Death shut it off abruptly. His body sagged, and Nick let it fall to the floor.
He looked around quickly. The paper wishing well nearby was nearly burned out, its frame collapsed into its foundation. Sparks from the fire flew into nearby stacks of flats but nothing more had ignited. Nick looked at Grant’s body and wondered what the hell the kid had been up to. He also considered the possibility that he had lied to him and maybe actually told someone else what he had seen in Jonathan’s room.
But there would be time to think about that later. His first concern now was what to do with the body. He thought about the fire once again. If he hadn’t come upon Grant, the kid might just have gotten a real blaze going. What if he had? That was a good question, and he repeated it to himself a couple of times before the answers began to come. He was pretty sure it wasn’t what Grant had in mind, but the fact was that if there was a big fire, it would require evacuation of the hotel and that meant he’d have a way of getting the hell out and back to the city. And there was something even more interesting. He began to calculate. The hotel had fire insurance and that presented a real possibility for him and his people to retrieve the money they’d invested. Granted, relatively speaking, it wasn’t a lot of cash but it added validity to their motto “We may not always win, but we try to never lose.”
He would claim credit for engineering this recap of funds and restore his credibility. Surely he would be rewarded for his initiative. He smiled as he looked back at Grant’s body. “Thanks, kid,” he muttered. He studied the basement—the studded ceiling, the piles of ignitable material. He noted the flammable paints and cleaning alcohol on the shelves. Then he looked inside the room where Grant’s body lay. There he saw the air and heat ducts that tunneled up through the ceiling leading to the very roof of the hotel. It was through these that the premises were heated or air conditioned. The metal surrounding the ducts was braced and framed by wood as old as the original building. The wood was matchstick dry. If he could get the flames to spurt high enough to reach the ducts in the ceiling …
He moved quickly, gathering the flammable liquids in both hands. Then he built a pile of flats, props and rags which he soaked with a can of makeshift starter fluid he found in the corner. He stepped back and listened. The basement remained eerily still—the day shift had long gone, the laundry room was closed because it was Saturday night and the stage crew was busy upstairs in the nightclub. Even most of the custodians had called it a night.
Without further hesitation, he moved the pile under the ducts, lit a rag soaked in paint thinner and threw the ball of fire onto his stack. Instantly, it ignited. He jumped back from the shock of heat that radiated outward. Flames flirted with the ceiling and the basement walls. He heaved on more material which caused the flames to flare even higher until they joined with the framework of the cooling and heating systems. There was a loud crack and then the fire shot up into the spine of the building. It followed the duct frames like an animal running a maze, a maze it knew by instinct, a maze it knew promised reward at the end.
At first the fire was narrow, confined by the diameter of the studs that served as its runway, but as it burned through the wood, it began to infect the very walls of the hotel’s interior. Ropes of flame dropped into every available opening, widening every crevice. They joined with electric wires in an alliance of movement and speed. When the fire met with any installation that proved an obstacle, it hesitated as if it had a consciousness and was considering alternatives. Then it simply found ways to move around it enveloping it until it lost its support and fell out of the path. Nothing in the hotel’s guts could stop the onslaught. It would be the most deadly of all possible blazes—working from the inside out.
As soon as Nick was satisfied that the conflagration had reached the point of no return, he stopped feeding material to the pyre. In the truest sense, that’s what it really was. This was the hotel’s funeral, whether the people upstairs knew it or not. Thinking of it in those terms gave Nick another idea. He took a full bottle of paint thinner and threw it over Grant’s corpse. Then, in one great effort, he lifted the body and threw it on the fire.
His mission accomplished, he walked quickly to the nearby service stairway and left. If he was really lucky, he thought, the fire would even be damaging enough to destroy Jonathan’s suite before anyone discovered his body. It could all be so perfect. He congratulated himself for his genius and actually considered going to the bar for a drink of celebration. But only if he was close to an exit.
Just a short time before Nick started the fire, the nightclub opened its doors. By now less than half of the hotel’s eight hundred guests were inside. Despite the liveliness of the orchestra and the quick one-liners from the M.C., a wakelike atmosphere hung oppressively over the proceedings.
Jack and Toby Feigen, renewed and relieved by the good news concerning their son, got a babysitter for their kids and came down to the Flamingo Room to be entertained. They moved gracefully down the aisle toward their table, pausing only to greet some people they had met in the dining room. Most men turned to look in their direction. Toby looked as radiant as ever.
Although the M.C. continually invited couples to enjoy themselves on the dance floor, few took advantage of the offer. Because of the limited lineup of talent available for the variety show, a half hour of dancing had been scheduled to start things off, hopefully to get people in a congenial mood. From the looks of things, it wasn’t working very well. Ellen had agreed with Artie Ross that Bobby Grant, the house singer, would be featured as the key act. It was the best they could do. Other members of the staff who had talent would follow. On any other occasion, it would have signaled the big break the amateurs had been waiting for. Tonight, however …
Ellen’s intention was to pop in and out of the nightclub all evening. Right now, though, her thoughts were preoccupied with the whereabouts of Sandi. The bellhops had returned without finding her. Magda had grown concerned and decided to keep away from Ellen until she could bring her some definite information.
Bruce joined Sid in the kitchen for coffee. They sat alone at a small table in the corner, a table usually reserved for the chefs. A lone janitor was completing his cleanup around the stoves. There was a real sense of hiatus, a respite to contemplate the significance of all that had gone on the past couple of days. Sid and Bruce spoke in quiet and calm tones. Both showed signs of fatigue. For the first time since breakfast, they could relax somewhat and even make jokes. Each of them wondered out loud about the whereabouts of Jonathan Lawrence.
“He’s probably sitting in his suite feeling sorry for himself,” Sid said, “trying to figure out what hotel to inflict himself on next.”
Upstairs, Melinda’s party had slowed somewhat but there was still enough activity to keep it going. New people arrived periodically, many simply to look in on what was being described as the “wildest scene in the mountains.” Manny Goldberg was singing in the corner near the spot where he had discovered his wife before. He had his arm around two women and the three of them were working over a chorus of “Roll Me Over in the Clover.”
Flo and her lifeguard had slipped into the linen room at the end of Melinda’s floor. That was why Manny couldn’t find them when he looked down the hall. It turned out to be the craziest experience of Flo’s life. The two of them stripped and climbed into the large linen cart stored in the rear. Then they rolled over and on top of each other in and around the soiled sheets and pillow cases, working to get into a comfortable position. Flo finally landed almost on her head, her ankles supported by the rim of the cart. The lifeguard mounted her by pressing his feet against the cloth sides and squatting on his knees. The wheels of the cart moved slightly back and forth in rhythm to their thrusts and returns, and they laughed and grunted simultaneously. Afterward, they collapsed against each other and dozed off in the softness of the linen.
Sam and Blanche Teitelbaum had decided to go to sleep early. They were both exhausted from the day’s events. He sat on the edge of the bed, a half-dazed expression on his face and waited while his wife washed and prepared herself for bed. The music from the nightclub, although muffled and subdued, was audible. Neither he nor Blanche liked air-conditioning. It usually made him cough. They preferred fans and opened windows. While he was waiting, he got up and checked to make sure their window was open.
Most of the staff—Stan Leshner, Moe Sandman, Mr. Pat, Rosie the telephone operator, Halloran, Rafferty and others came to the nightclub to be supportive of the staff entertainers. The hotel family, threatened and desperate, had closed into an even tighter and stronger alliance. Like circus people, they came together in a crisis and lent each other comfort and support. They applauded when Ellen entered the club. She joined them for a while and then went to see the Feigens, greeted other guests, and left to check the main desk for news of Sandi.
Charlotte talked herself into a short nap. Her head was still spinning from drinking on an empty stomach and throwing up and she knew she just had to sleep for a while. When she lowered her head to the pillow, she immediately passed out.
Outside, the hotel path lights flickered. A new shift of state police had come to the gates of the hotel. The driveway was empty, and there was an ominous quiet about the grounds. Some chambermaids were walking at a leisurely pace back to their quarters. They were talking so low their voices couldn’t be heard. Although Sandi was not in the farmhouse, her bedroom lights were on. It was the only window lit in the old wooden building.
The night sky was moonless, clear and filled with stars. The humidity was somewhat high and the breeze had died down considerably. The tree limbs were so still it was as though they had been painted onto the scene. The silence was extraordinary, and because of this the music of the nightclub carried all the way to the main gate of the hotel. The two new patrolmen listened to it for a few moments and then continued their conversation.
The line of traffic going past the grounds was constant. Many local residents were curious and teenagers from the nearby towns drove by to get as close a look as they could at what was happening at the Congress. National radio and television networks had picked up the story. The Sunday morning headlines for the News and the Mirror had already been constructed!
CONGRESS BECOMES PRISON FOR THOUSANDS CATSKILL RESORT LOCKED UP BY CHOLERA.
There were only thirty or forty guests in the main lobby. A group of bellhops were off to the right of the information desk bemoaning the fact that no one was tipping. The switchboard was active with incoming and outgoing calls, but the receptionist at the counter had little to do. When Ellen came back to the lobby, she remembered she wanted to send a bellhop up to Jonathan’s suite to see if he was there and why he didn’t answer the phone. She called one over, gave him instructions and sent him to the main desk for a master key. Then she went to her office to call the farmhouse again and see if Sandi had returned.
The bellhop got his key and went to the elevators. He pressed the button to command one and waited. His attention was drawn back to his buddies, who kidded him about the errand. Then he turned back to the elevator. When it didn’t open, he pushed the button again. It was then that he noticed that the lights showing which floor the elevator was on were all off.
Sandi sat on the bench at the edge of the baseball field cloaked by the darkness. She was far enough away from the main building to escape the reach of its lights. After she had left the basement, she had wandered about aimlessly until for some reason this was where she had ended up. There was nothing deliberate about her choice but when she had gotten there, she realized it was on this very bench a couple of years ago that she had sat with her father and they had had one of their longest private conversations. He had told her stories about some of the things that had happened to him at the hotel when he was her age. She had laughed at the panorama of characters he resurrected—old Mrs. Rosenblatt, who pilfered entire meals from dining room tables and smuggled them out in her large pocketbook to share with the pigeons; Max Grossbard, the undertaker, who married and buried four wives, honeymooning with each at the Congress. “Imagine the confusion each time he introduced his new wife to Mama and Papa.” Then there were people like the Rothen-bergs. “Their son Danny was so lonely they offered me money to play with him. The first time I took their nickel, Mama practically cried. She made me give it back to them and I felt so bad, I ended up giving Danny a nickel of my own. Later he became one of my best friends.”
As she sat there remembering, she could almost hear his voice. “Remember that no matter how busy I am, princess, I’m only doing it for you and your mother because you’re the two people in the world I love most. And I’m so glad you’re around to keep mommy company when I get involved at the hotel.” Her throat ached from trying to hold back tears. Oh, God, she thought, what have I done?
Thinking about leaving the farmhouse against her mother’s orders and Grant and that terrible scene in the hideaway made her feel terribly guilty. If her father were alive, would he still call her his little princess?
“Daddy,” she whispered, wishing there was some way she could bring him back. “Daddy.” She closed her eyes and embraced herself, rocking gently back and forth. “I’ll be a good girl from now on. I promise.”
She remained sitting like that for a while, totally lost in herself. Then the sound of an excited voice broke her spell.
One of the custodians was running from the basement entrance a couple of hundred yards away. She stood up on the bench so she could see better. He was waving his arms madly, desperate for someone’s attention. It looked like his clothes were on fire.
“What is it?” she shouted, but he was too far away to hear. She struggled to understand what was going on.
She jumped down and took a few steps forward. The custodian fled around the corner of the building, heading for the front entrance. She had never seen a grown man in such panic. Then suddenly she caught on.
“Mommy,” she said. It was practically inaudible. “MOMMY!” she shouted, and ran with all her might toward the main house.