Cell Read online

  With these things seen to, and Alice Maxwell's radically abridged tale told, Clay finally went to the telephone behind the desk. He glanced at his watch. It was 4:22 p.m., a perfectly logical time for it to be, except any ordinary sense of time seemed to have been canceled. It felt like hours since he'd seen the man biting the dog in the park. It also seemed like no time at all. But there was time, such as humans measured it, anyway, and in Kent Pond, Sharon would surely be back by now at the house he still thought of as home. He needed to talk to her. To make sure she was all right and tell her he was, too, but those weren't the important things. Making sure Johnny was all right, that was important, but there was something even more important than that. Vital, really.

  He didn't have a cell phone, and neither did Sharon, he was almost positive of that. She might have picked one up since they'd separated in April, he supposed, but they still lived in the same town, he saw her almost every day, and he thought if she'd picked one up, he would have known. For one thing, she would have given him the number, right? Right. But--

  But Johnny had one. Little Johnny-Gee, who wasn't so little anymore, twelve wasn't so little, and that was what he'd wanted for his last birthday. A red cell phone that played the theme music from his favorite TV program when it rang. Of course he was forbidden to turn it on or even take it out of his backpack when he was in school, but school hours were over now. Also, Clay and Sharon actually encouraged him to take it, partly because of the separation. There might be emergencies, or minor inconveniences such as a missed bus. What Clay had to hang on to was how Sharon had said she'd look into Johnny's room lately and more often than not see the cell lying forgotten on his desk or the windowsill beside his bed, off the charger and dead as dogshit.

  Still, the thought of John's red cell phone ticked away in his mind like a bomb.

  Clay touched the landline phone on the hotel desk, then withdrew his hand. Outside, something else exploded, but this one was distant. It was like hearing an artillery shell explode when you were well behind the lines.

  Don't make that assumption, he thought. Don't even assume there are lines.

  He looked across the lobby and saw Tom squatting beside Alice as she sat on the sofa. He was murmuring to her quietly, touching one of her loafers and looking up into her face. That was good. He was good. Clay was increasingly glad he'd run into Tom McCourt...or that Tom McCourt had run into him.

  The landlines were probably all right. The question was whether probably was good enough. He had a wife who was still sort of his responsibility, and when it came to his son there was no sort-of at all. Even thinking of Johnny was dangerous. Every time his mind turned to the boy, Clay felt a panic-rat inside his mind, ready to burst free of the flimsy cage that held it and start gnawing anything it could get at with its sharp little teeth. If he could make sure Johnny and Sharon were okay, he could keep the rat in its cage and plan what to do next. But if he did something stupid, he wouldn't be able to help anyone. In fact, he would make things worse for the people here. He thought about this a little and then called the desk clerk's name.

  When there was no answer from the inner office, he called again. When there was still no answer, he said, "I know you hear me, Mr. Ricardi. If you make me come in there and get you, it'll annoy me. I might get annoyed enough to consider putting you out on the street."

  "You can't do that," Mr. Ricardi said in a tone of surly instruction. "You are a guest of the hotel."

  Clay thought of repeating what Tom had said to him while they were still outside--things have changed. Something made him keep silent instead.

  "What," Mr. Ricardi said at last. Sounding more surly than ever. From overhead came a louder thump, as if someone had dropped a heavy piece of furniture. A bureau, maybe. This time even the girl looked up. Clay thought he heard a muffled shout--or maybe a howl of pain--but if so, there was no follow-up. What was on the second floor? Not a restaurant, he remembered being told (by Mr. Ricardi himself, when Clay checked in) that the hotel didn't have a restaurant, but the Metropolitan Cafe was right next door. Meeting rooms, he thought. I'm pretty sure it's meeting rooms with Indian names.

  "What?" Mr. Ricardi asked again. He sounded grouchier than ever.

  "Did you try to call anyone when all this started happening?"

  "Well of course!" Mr. Ricardi said. He came to the door between the inner office and the area behind the reception desk, with its pigeonholes, security monitors, and its bank of computers. There he looked at Clay indignantly. "The fire alarms went off--I got them stopped, Doris said it was a wastebasket fire on the third floor--and I called the Fire Department to tell them not to bother. The line was busy! Busy, can you imagine!"

  "You must have been very upset," Tom said.

  Mr. Ricardi looked mollified for the first time. "I called the police when things outside started... you know...to go downhill."

  "Yes," Clay said. To go downhill was one way of putting it, all right. "Did you get an answer?"

  "A man told me I'd have to clear the line and then hung up on me," Mr. Ricardi said. The indignation was creeping back into his voice. "When I called again--this was after the crazy man came out of the elevator and killed Franklin--a woman answered. She said..." Mr. Ricardi's voice had begun to quiver and Clay saw the first tears running down the narrow defiles that marked the sides of the man's nose. "... said..."

  "What?" Tom asked, in that same tone of mild sympathy. "What did she say, Mr. Ricardi?"

  "She said if Franklin was dead and the man who killed him had run away, then I didn't have a problem. It was she who advised me to lock myself in. She also told me to call the hotel's elevators to lobby level and shut them off, which I did."

  Clay and Tom exchanged a look that carried a wordless thought: Good idea. Clay got a sudden vivid image of bugs trapped between a closed window and a screen, buzzing furiously but unable to get out. This picture had something to do with the thumps they'd heard coming from above them. He wondered briefly how long before the thumper or thumpers up there would find the stairs.

  "Then she hung up on me. After that, I called my wife in Milton."

  "You got through to her," Clay said, wanting to be clear on this.

  "She was very frightened. She asked me to come home. I told her I had been advised to stay inside with 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. K
nowing 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.

  "At midafternoon, businesspeople are usually out doing whatever it was that brought them to Boston. So you see, we have the place almost to ourselves."

  As if to contradict this, there came another thump from above them, more shattering glass, and a faint feral growl. They all looked up.

  "Clay, listen," Tom said. "If the guy up there finds the stairs... I don't know if these people are capable of thought, but--"

  "Judging by what we saw on the street," Clay said, "even calling them people might be wrong. I've got an idea that guy up there is more like a bug trapped between a window and a screen. A bug trapped like that might get out--if it found a hole--and the guy up there might find the stairs, but if he does, I think it'll be by accident."

  "And when he gets down and finds the door to the lobby blocked, he'll use the fire-door to the alley," Mr. Ricardi said with what was, for him, eagerness. "We'll hear the alarm--it's rigged to ring when anyone pushes the bar--and we'll know he's gone. One less nut to worry about."

  Somewhere south of them something big blew up, and they all cringed. Clay supposed he now knew what living in Beirut during the 1980s had been like.

  "I'm trying to make a point here," he said patiently.

  "I don't think so," Tom said. "You're going anyway, because you're worried about your wife and son. You're trying to persuade us because you want company."

  Clay blew out a frustrated breath. "Sure I want company, but that's not why I'm trying to talk you into coming. The smell of smoke's stronger, but when's the last time you heard a siren?"

  None of them replied.

  "Me either," Clay said. "I don't think things are goin
g to get better in Boston, not for a while. They're going to get worse. If it was the cell phones--"

  "She tried to leave a message for Dad," Alice said. She spoke rapidly, as if wanting to make sure she got all the words out before the memory flew away. "She just wanted to make sure he'd pick up the dry cleaning because she needed her yellow wool dress for her committee meeting and I needed my extra uni for the away game on Saturday. This was in the cab. And then we crashed! She choked the man and she bit the man and his turban fell off and there was blood on the side of his face and we crashed!"

  Alice looked around at their three staring faces, then put her own face in her hands and began to sob. Tom moved to comfort her, but Mr. Ricardi surprised Clay by coming around his desk and putting one pipestemmy arm around the girl before Tom could get to her. "There-there," he said. "I'm sure it was all a misunderstanding, young lady."

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and wild. "Misunderstanding?" She indicated the dried bib of blood on the front of her dress. "Does this look like a misunderstanding? I used the karate from the self-defense classes I took in junior high. I used karate on my own mother! I broke her nose, I think... I'm sure . . ." Alice shook her head rapidly, her hair flying. "And still, if I hadn't been able to reach behind me and get the door open..."

  "She would have killed you," Clay said flatly.

  "She would have killed me," Alice agreed in a whisper. "She didn't know who I was. My own mother." She looked from Clay to Tom. "It was the cell phones," she said in that same whisper. "It was the cell phones, all right."

  14

  "So how many of the damn things are there in Boston?" Clay asked. "What's the market penetration?"

  "Given the large numbers of college students, I'd say it's got to be huge," Mr. Ricardi replied. He had resumed his seat behind his desk, and now he looked a little more animated. Comforting the girl might have done it, or perhaps it was being asked a business-oriented question. "Although it goes much further than affluent young people, of course. I read an article in Inc. only a month or two ago that claimed there's now as many cell phones in mainland China as there are people in America. Can you imagine?"