Trying to calm the roiling waters of his own temperament, Emmett turned his attention away from the events of the day toward the challenges that lay ahead.
When they had all been seated together at the kitchen table in Morgen, Duchess had said that before going to the Adirondacks, he and Woolly were going to stop in Manhattan to see his father.
From Duchess’s stories it was clear that Mr. Hewett rarely had a steady address. But on Townhouse’s last day in Salina, Duchess had encouraged Townhouse to look him up in the city—by contacting one of his father’s booking agencies. Even if a has-been is on the run from creditors, wanted by the cops, and living under an assumed name, Duchess had said with a wink, he’ll always leave word of where he can be found with the agencies. And in New York City, all the biggest bookers of has-beens have offices in the same building at the bottom of Times Square.
The only problem was that Emmett couldn’t remember the name of the building.
He was fairly certain it began with an S. As he lay there, he tried to jog his memory by going through the alphabet and systematically sounding out all the possible combinations of the first three letters of the building’s name. Beginning with Sa, he would say to himself: Sab, sac, sad, saf, sag, and so on. Then it was the combinations flowing from Sc and Se and Sh.
Maybe it was the sound of Billy whispering, or his own murmuring of alphabetical triplets. Or maybe it was the warm, wooden smell of the boxcar after its long day in the sun. Whatever the cause, instead of recalling the name of a building at the bottom of Times Square, Emmett was suddenly nine years old in the attic of his house with the hatch pulled up, building a fort with his parents’ old trunks—the ones that once had traveled to Paris and Venice and Rome and that hadn’t traveled anywhere since—which in turn brought memories of his mother wondering where he could have gotten to and the sound of her voice calling out his name as she went from room to room to room.
SIX
Duchess
When I knocked on the door of room 42, I heard a groan and a labored movement on the bedsprings as if the sound of my rapping had woken him from a deep sleep. Given it was nearly noon, that was right on schedule. After a moment, I could hear him put his hungover feet on the floor. I could hear him look around the room as he tried to get his bearings, taking in the cracked plaster of the ceiling and the peeling wallpaper with a hint of bewilderment, as if he couldn’t quite grasp what he was doing in a room like this, couldn’t quite believe it, even after all these years.
Ah, yes, I could almost hear him say.
Ever so politely, I knocked again.
Another groan—this time a groan of effort—then the release of the bedsprings as he rose to his feet and began moving slowly toward the door.
—Coming, a muffled voice called.
As I waited, I found myself genuinely curious as to how he would look. Barely two years had gone by, but at his age with his lifestyle, two years could do a lot of damage.
But when the door creaked open, it wasn’t my old man.
—Yes?
Somewhere in his seventies, room 42’s occupant had a genteel bearing and the accent to go with it. At one time, he could have been the master of an estate, or served the man who was.
—Is there something I can do for you, young man? he asked, as I glanced over his shoulder.
—I was looking for someone who used to live here. My father, actually.
—Oh, I see. . . .
His shaggy eyebrows drooped a little, as if he were actually sorry to have been the cause of a stranger’s disappointment. Then his eyebrows rose again.
—Perhaps he left a forwarding address downstairs?
—More likely an unpaid bill, but I’ll ask on my way out. Thanks.
He nodded in sympathy. But when I turned to go, he called me back.
—Young man. By any chance, was your father an actor?
—He was known to call himself one.
—Then wait a moment. I believe he may have left something behind.
As the old gent shuffled his way to the bureau, I scanned the room, curious as to his weakness. At the Sunshine Hotel, for every room there was a weakness, and for every weakness an artifact bearing witness. Like an empty bottle that has rolled under the bed, or a feathered deck of cards on the nightstand, or a bright pink kimono on a hook. Some evidence of that one desire so delectable, so insatiable that it overshadowed all others, eclipsing even the desires for a home, a family, or a sense of human dignity.
Given how slow the old man moved I had plenty of time to look, and the room was only ten by ten, but if evidence of his weakness was present, for the life of me I couldn’t spot it.