“Damn right you do,” she said as she caught up with Kennedy once more.
“And it’s just not for the reasons I just mentioned.” He reached the front doors and stopped. “For some reason, that house knows Jackson is involved with what’s happening on the 31st. It tracked him down to deliver UBC’s missing people to him.”
“Yeah?” She switched her large bag to the other shoulder.
“They were sent to deliver a message.”
The light finally dawned in Julie’s eyes. “We need to know what Summer Place communicated to him.”
“Now you’re starting to get just what may be crazy here, Ms. Reilly.”
Julie smiled as Kennedy turned and went through the doorway. The doorman took Kennedy’s valet ticket.
Julie shook her head. “My bet is still on the human factor.”
“Yeah?” he said with a larger than normal smile.
“Yes, it is.”
“Mine’s on Summer Place.”
Jason Sanborn yawned, leaning forward and pressing his head lightly against the door. He heard nothing but the hiss of air by his ear, and so he pulled away and leaned against the wall. He pulled his pipe from his jacket pocket, looked from it to the “no smoking” sign, and frowned. He placed the pipe back into his jacket and then leaned his ear to the door once more. He was rewarded with a mumbled shout, and then sudden silence.
“No horrific sounds, no blood curdling screams yet?”
Jason’s heart almost jumped from his chest. The voice caught him totally unawares. He turned and saw the smiling face of George Cordero. “Oh, God. You scared the living hell out of me.” Jason grabbed his chest.
“Calm down old boy. This is the Waldorf, not the House on Haunted Hill.”
“What are you doing up here? It’s nearly two in the morning.”
“Ah, the lounge died down to nothing after Jennifer’s magic trick, so I thought I would cruise the hallways looking for adventure and hijinks.”
Jason rummaged in his pocket, fumbling for his pipe once more. He placed it in his mouth and tried to look as if he wasn’t on edge. “Well, you’re not missing anything up here, so I guess you’ll have to find your hijinks and adventure somewhere else.”
“Boy, everyone’s just as friendly as hell tonight.” Cordero leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “Still, I think I’ll wait and see if our resident medicine man gets a line on anything.”
Jason removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at George. He studied him for a moment and then looked at his empty pipe.
“You don’t care for Mr. Lonetree, do you?”
George smiled as he looked to his left down the long and empty hallway.
“I don’t care for most people, Mr. Sanborn. If you had the talent,” he looked at Jason with serious eyes, “or curse, you would find that the basic human being is a piece of shit. Always out to screw someone over.”
“Then why are you here?” Sanborn asked.
“Kennedy. That man is tenacious. I was a patient of his many years ago; he hadn’t been out of school very long. He found me in an alley in Pasadena. When he pulled me out of there and started talking to me, I would have never known he was a shrink. Then he took me to his house and I saw his diploma on the wall. At first I thought he was a freak or something — you know, out to doodle a kid off the street. But instead of being a perv, the man actually tossed me his house keys and told me where the food was, and then he left. I didn’t see him for two days. You see, Kennedy had a feeling too. He knew I wouldn’t rip him off. After that, we spoke for weeks. He taught me that it was okay to be bitter about my talent.”
“Did you ever use your talent on Kennedy?” Jason asked.
“No, if I did that, it would open a two way street and exchange of information, and I don’t need Gabriel Kennedy that far into my head. He did test my clairvoyance, though, and he did verify what I had wasn’t natural. He believed me right off the bat, and didn’t try to give me the full battery of medical testing that most doctors would do. You know, looking for the grapefruit-sized tumor on my head, or the dark past that had me killing my immediate family. He knew it was a gift and never doubted that or tried to cloud it with medical terminology. That, Mr. Sanborn, is why I’m here.” He stared Jason for a few uncomfortable seconds. “Gabriel Kennedy is my only friend in the world, and I suspect if he doesn’t get answers this time around, it will kill him. Maybe physically, maybe mentally, but it will certainly damage him beyond repair. I won’t let that happen.”
“Well, that proves you have some humanity in you. So why don’t you respect Mr. Lonetree’s talent?”
Cordero chuckled and then examined the hallway. The elevator chimed, a hundred feet away. He heard the doors slide open, and then closed. He watched, but no one came from the elevator landing.
“I don’t go looking for the feeling. My curse is the mere touching of someone, or something. Our Indian friend goes in search of trouble. He wants to connect with his gift, and that can be very dangerous. It’s like inviting a vampire into your house. Once done, it can’t be undone. Mr. Lonetree is fucking with something that, once in his head, may not want to leave.”
“That sounds ominous,” Jason said as he once more bit down on his pipe.
“I guess that’s why we’re both standing in this freaking hallway in the wee hours of the morning. Yes, Mr. Sanborn, very ominous.”
Jennifer checked the last item off her list, frowning in frustration when John groaned and pushed the latest and last item away in his sleep. The small silver framed photo of the Lindemann children, taken around the pool at Summer Place sometime in the early summer of 1932, hadn’t sparked anything in Lonetree’s sleep colored world. She laid the silver frame on the bell cart and then examined the sleeping man. His sleep wasn’t what she would have called restful. He turned his head to the left and then to the right, and then became still again. He had released his long black hair and it was splayed out on the pillow. He shook, and then his body calmed once more.
“Well, that’s it for the house items,” she said softly. She leaned over, listening as John mumbled in his sleep. The words were of his native language; Jennifer couldn’t understand them, but she found it all to be fascinating. She reached out and touched John’s hair and he immediately calmed. She smiled and straightened. She would keep her little secret to herself. She didn’t want John to know how she was starting to feel about him, so early. She knew most men would shy away from her, but she felt the goodness in Lonetree and she clung to it like a drowning swimmer hugging a buoy.
She returned to the bell cart and the items Wallace Lindemann had brought from Summer Place. She felt frustrated that John had shown no reaction to any of the items on the cart. From the large framed painting of the family Lindemann, which she thought for sure would elicit some response, to the small household items such as the doilies from the sedans and arm chairs. Even the bottles of very aged whiskey, which she thought may have been left there by accident by Wallace Lindemann, had no effect on John’s sleep patterns. While some of them caused a stir, nothing seemed to make him Dream Walk.
Jennifer shook her head. She took the cart by its large frame and started pushing it toward the corner of the room. Something on the floor became entangled in the small wheels of the cart, stopping her. She knelt down, thinking that maybe her sweater had fallen from the desk chair. In the darkness, she felt the material. It wasn’t her sweater. She pulled, and felt the fabric tear. Pulling the cart backward, she tried again. The material came free into her hand and she held it close to her face. It was a dress. She felt the straps and the length as she stood and walked toward the desk. With one look at John, who was still sleeping peacefully, she turned the desk lamp toward the wall so as not to wake him, and switched it on. holding the dress close to the light. It was a black sequined gown. Jenny froze. She scrambled to find her list of items that Lindemann had brought, scanning it one line at a time. She turned and looked at the bell cart. then at the old and dusty dress again. She knew she had not seen the dress at any time, when she had been inventorying, removing or replacing the items on the cart.