In this place infested with human cockroaches, one mistake would be the end of me, too. I dared not leave a corpse sprawled in plain sight, and not just because the state of Nevada had anti-littering laws. I cautiously opened the door through which Rob had stepped less than a minute earlier. A small office with one desk, a computer, two chairs, no people. I holstered the Glock, gripped the dead man by his wrists, dragged him out of the corridor.
In books and movies, at moments like this, the good guy—a title that I’m taking the liberty of attaching to myself—goes through the pockets and the wallet of the thug he had to kill, searching for and discovering clues that tell him who his enemies are. I already knew what these people were, and I didn’t care who. I tucked him into the knee space under the desk.
I’m not sure what I expected the office of a hardworking devil-worshipper to look like. Maybe a lamp with a shade made of human skin, a baby’s skull used as a pencil holder, wallpaper after a design by the Marquis de Sade, and a desk calendar with 365 pages featuring the wit and wisdom of Hitler. The reality included a poster headlined THE 12 RULES OF SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT and another poster made from a photo of a house cat cornered by a crocodile above the words SHIT HAPPENS. On the desk were a bank statement and spreadsheet. Stuck here and there, Post-its provided neatly printed reminders: SHERRY’S BIRTHDAY GIFT, the culinarily specific HOT SAUCE, GREEN AND RED, and an almost desperate PAPER CLIPS!
I snatched a box of Kleenex from beside the computer, returned to the corridor, and quickly wiped up the blood on the gray vinyl-tile floor. There wasn’t much of it. One of the rounds had stopped his heart.
When I picked up the sheet of paper that he had been reading, it proved to be a joke going around the Internet. It concerned two dogs, a famous newspaper, Valentine’s Day, and urination. I couldn’t imagine why he’d found it funny enough to laugh out loud.
In the office again, I dropped the tissues and the paper in the waste can. I drew the Glock that now held thirteen rounds, turned off the lights, and stood in the dark, taking slow, deep breaths.
There is a keen distinction between the words murder and kill. Because of envy or greed, jealousy or rage, ideology or sheer blind hatred, the murderer takes the precious life of another. To prevent the murderer from doing so or to deal justice, or to save myself, I may kill him. He murders, I kill. Funny, then, that killers tend to be the ones who have to overcome nausea in the immediate aftermath and who struggle with guilt in the long run, while the murderers go from slaughter to celebration without a hiccup.
I returned to the hallway, pulled the door shut behind me, and almost shot Mr. Hitchcock, which would have been regrettable even if he was a spirit who couldn’t be harmed. He stood farther along the corridor, waving at me as if I might be so preoccupied that I wouldn’t notice him.
As I approached the director, he turned to his left, giving me his famous profile, and walked through a door. I almost sang the tune from his old TV show: Dunt-da-da-da-da-dunt-da-da, dunt-da-da-da-da-dunt-da-da.
When I opened the door through which he had passed, I found him waiting for me in a room about twenty feet square. Deep sturdy metal shelving units lined all four walls from floor to ceiling. They were packed full of just two items: thousands of rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. It was such a strange hoard that I couldn’t help but marvel at it for a moment.
In that singular voice and precise diction, Mr. Hitchcock said, “They must have reason to believe the world will end by diarrhea.”
I don’t recall my reply. I know I said something, but my own words were forever knocked out of my memory by the sudden realization that he had talked.
Twenty-eight
THE DEAD DON’T TALK. I DON’T KNOW WHY. I’VE ALWAYS thought that they are denied speech because, if they possessed it, they would be likely to reveal something about death that the living are not meant to know.
Mr. Hitchcock had died thirty-two years earlier. There had never been any crazy rumors about him having faked his death, as there had been about Elvis. Besides, he chose to manifest as about fifty years of age, when he’d been in his prime as a filmmaker; but if this was the real Mr. Hitchcock, he would be far past the century mark, having been born in 1899.
I stared at him, aware that my mouth hung open but unable to close it.
“Mr. Thomas,” he said, “the hour is late, the clock is ticking, and this scenario requires James Stewart, not Tab Hunter.”
“Sir … you’re talking.”
“Your powers of observation are impressive. But they alone will not ensure the safety of seventeen children. There are things—”
“But the spirits of the lingering dead don’t talk.”
“I died, as you know. But I have never lingered in my entire existence, either before death or after. One always has too much to do to linger anywhere. Now there are things I need to tell you, Mr. Thomas, but the telling will be pointless if you are not prepared to listen.”
“Call me Odd, sir. Or Oddie. That would be cool. I mean, since I’m such a fan. Your work was brilliant.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Some of it was quite good, some just all right, some unfortunate. Where you may have serious complaints, I imagine they should be addressed to the producer with whom I had to work on occasion, Mr. David O. Selznick—wherever he may be. Now shall we get to the matter of the children?”
“Wait a minute,” I said, thunderstruck by a sudden realization. “You can’t just—We’ve got to— If you’re talking— I mean, then what are you, sir? Are you my … my guardian angel?”
“I am touched by your high opinion of me, Mr. Thomas.”
“Call me Odd.”
“That’s very kind of you. But angels, Mr. Thomas, are born angels and are never anything else, except of course when they disguise themselves, when visiting Earth, as
people or dogs, or whatever. I assure you that during my many years on Earth, I was not an angel pretending to be human, and I am not an angel now.”
“Then what are you?”
“The hierarchy of spirits and the assignment of various tasks and responsibilities after death are issues more complicated than Hollywood has portrayed them. No surprise there. But if you insist on my spelling out all of that, I assure you that by the time I finish, the children will be dead.”
He pushed out his lower lip, raised his eyebrows, and regarded me expectantly, as if to say, Shall we let them die, then, so your curiosity can be satisfied?
In defense of my temporary inability to focus on the children, I can only plead that I had recently fended off three attack dogs, toured a collection of severed heads, visited a satanic temple, just killed a man—killed, not murdered—was afraid that I would have to kill many more, had heard a spirit speak for the first time ever, and he was Alfred Hitchcock.
But his raised eyebrows and his pout of disapproval, subtle as they were, brought me to my senses, as I imagine that expression and others equally well-practiced had brought errant actors back to the script and to the intended tone of a production with little or no argument. I thought of him turning the same look on Gregory Peck or Rod Taylor—surely never on Cary Grant or James Stewart—and I couldn’t help but grin.
As soon as I saw his reaction to my delight, of course, I wiped the grin off my face. “Where are the children, sir?”
“They are under guard on the third floor, Mr. Thomas. Getting them down from there and out of this house will test your wits and courage.”
“But I thought they were here in the basement. Jessie, Jasmine, Jordan, and the others. When I thought about them, I was drawn down here to the basement.”