Tod pulled out a cell phone.
"What are you doing?" Vinnie asked.
"Calling my brother in Atlantic City. He'll tell the police. He'll get help."
"You finally decided going to prison was better than facing Ronnie?'' Cora asked in disgust.
"My brother'll save me." Tod finished pressing numbers and shoved the phone to his ear. "My brother'll get the police here and…" Listening, he moaned. "No. No. No."
"What's wrong?"
Thunder rumbled.
"Out of service!'' Tod said. "The fucking storm's interfering with the phone!"
"Guess you should have called a little sooner, huh?" Vinnie said, his face red with fury. "We ought to tape you to the chair and let Ronnie do what he wants to you."
"But you won't.''
"You're sure of that? You think I'm not pissed off at you enough to-"
"You can't afford to. We're pals now," Tod said. "Don't you get it? We need to stick together. You need all the help you can get."
Vinnie told Balenger, "We stuffed as much equipment as we could into the knapsack. What didn't fit we hooked to our belts. The police-report file is still in the slot in the knapsack. I guess they didn't know it was there. Otherwise, they'd have dumped that, also. You want a souvenir?" Vinnie gave him a coin.
Balenger held it, feeling its weight, its thickness, its perfect edges. A magnificent eagle was on one side. On the other, a buxom Lady Liberty carried a torch. The gold seemed to glow. TWENTY DOLLARS, IN GOD WE TRUST. "That's a great word: 'souvenir.' It means we might live to remember this. Here's hoping." Balenger kissed it and put it in a pocket. "Maybe it'll bring us luck."
Cora pointed. "This is the equipment we Jeff for you."
Balenger put on the remaining tool belt. He hooked a walkie-talkie to it, along with the hammer and a half-full water bottle. "Where's the crowbar?"
"I told you Mack had it," Tod said.
"You damned stupid…" Balenger studied the air meters and left them. They were luxuries now. "Here's something else we can leave." He held up the water pistol. "Must have thrown it away in favor of carrying more coins."
"Give it to me." Cora raised it to her nostrils, as if hoping it retained her dead husband's scent, but the disgusted shake of her head indicated that all she smelled was vinegar.
Amanda looked frozen.
"Here. Take my Windbreaker." Vinnie put it around her.
She zipped it over her nightgown, looking grateful for the warmth. The Windbreaker was long enough to cover her hips.
"Ready?" Balenger asked.
"For what?" Tod said. "There's nothing we can do."
"We can take the high ground."
"High ground. What are you talking about?"
"The penthouse." Balenger picked up his hard hat where Tod had thrown it. Its light was out. He flicked the switch. Nothing happened. "You piece of shit, you broke the headlamp."
"Penthouse?" Tod said, appalled.
"I can't." Amanda shuddered. "That's where Ronnie takes me."
"There are other hidden staircases. I'm sure of it," Balenger said, bitterly examining the useless lamp on his hard hat. "They all lead to the penthouse. Ronnie can't guard them all. We might be able to find a staircase that gets us out of here before he realizes we're gone."
"Yeah, and we might pick one that leads us straight to him," Tod said.
"Your way, he knows where we are, and he comes for us."
"We've got a gun."
"With only twelve rounds left, thanks to you. And how do you know Ronnie doesn't have a gun, also?"
Tod looked sick.
"You should dump those coins." Balenger pointed at Tod's bulging pockets. "The weight will slow you down."
"No way am I tossing that much money."
"Vinnie and Cora have headlamps. Where's your flashlight?"
"Lost it."
"Fucking great. Which leaves this one that Mack or JD dropped so he could carry more coins." Vinnie indicated the flashlight holstered to his belt.
"Not much light. We'd better blow out these candles and take them with us," Balenger said. "And something else."
When he was taped to the chair with the pillowcase over him, waiting for Ronnie to cut off his head, Balenger had told himself that there couldn't be anything more -nightmarish he'd be forced to suffer. But the pattern of his life made him realize he was wrong. Things got worse. They always got worse. And what he needed to do now proved it.
He turned toward the professor's headless body on the sofa. Between Conklin's legs, the headlamp continued to glow up through the sheet. Seized by revulsion, Balenger lifted the edge of the blood-soaked sheet and felt under it. His trembling hands touched the professor's beard. With greater revulsion, he pried the chin strap free and tugged the hard hat away, feeling the professor's head tilt. He pulled the hat from under the sheet and almost wept at the blood on it.
"Sorry, Bob," he said. "I'm so sorry."
He put the lamp on his head and felt his muscles cramp. "Let's go."
45
After a cautious look down the stairwell, Balenger climbed toward the penthouse. He heard footsteps on metal below him, the others following. As he was about to press up on a hatch, Amanda said, "There's a switch to the side, behind the two-by-four on the wall to your right. Ronnie always presses it before he lifts the door. I think it shuts off a trap of some kind."
Balenger felt behind the board, touched a switch, and flicked it. He pushed at the hatch. To his relief and then suspicion, it rose smoothly, with none of the creak of hinges he'd heard in the rest of the hotel. What he heard instead was the increased din of the storm. The skylight didn't extend this far. No rain poured through. But the rain did its best to penetrate, pounding relentlessly on the roof.
The light on Balenger's hard hat revealed a dark chamber. A chair. A bureau. A canopied bed. Wallpaper. All were in a lush, Victorian style. His nostrils picked up the smell of strong household cleaners.
Wary, he peered along the floor and noticed a lever that the rising trapdoor had flipped upward. The lever was linked to wires that led to a metal box. He imagined what would have happened if Amanda hadn't remembered to tell him about the switch. "Looks like explosives. I guess Ronnie figured if the wrong person came up here, it was time to make sure the evidence was destroyed."
Continuing to scan his light around the room, Balenger climbed all the way up and aimed his pistol toward the shadows. Tod, Amanda, Cora, and Vinnie followed. Their headlamps and Vinnie's flashlight searched the room.
"No dust, no cobwebs." Cora sounded puzzled.
Amanda's voice shook. "Ronnie keeps it absolutely spotless."
When Vinnie shut the trapdoor, he discovered a bolt on it and rammed it into a metal slot anchored to the floor. "No way to free the bolt from underneath."
Compared to the chill of Danata's suite, Balenger noticed, the penthouse was curiously warm. "Hurry. We need to find the other trapdoors and lock them before Ronnie gets to one of them." He headed toward a door straight ahead.
"No. That's the bathroom," Amanda said.
Balenger shifted toward a door on the left, and suddenly a blazing light filled the room. It was overhead, making him shield his eyes with his left hand while he crouched, ready with the pistol in his right. "How did…"
Amanda stood against a wall, her hand on a switch. "The penthouse has electricity."
The information was so surprising, Balenger took a moment to adjust to it. Now he understood why the penthouse felt warm-the heating system was on.