Hotel Destiny, page 13
Cole put the file back in its place in the drawer and then was stumped about what to do next. Was there another baby with burn marks? He clearly remembered the agency administrator talking about “Charles” when he’d witnessed his parents meeting with her.
“The file you’re looking for is Whitten.”
Cole turned to see the man in the black cloak and white mask standing on the other side of the table.
“Whitten?” Cole asked.
“I was adopted by Gregory and Gayle Whitten.”
Cole shone the flashlight at his brother. “Why don’t you take off your mask?”
“I always wear it. The burn damage is too…let’s just say that I could play the role of the Phantom of the Opera without any stage makeup.”
Cole started to sweat. He didn’t know if he was dreaming or what….
“I have imagined you for a long time,” he said. “When we were little, you didn’t have on a mask or have burns on your face.”
Charlie cocked his head slightly. “Aren’t you imagining me now?”
Cole didn’t know if he was or not. All this time-jumping and Dream States stuff all blended together into a confusing and unpleasant jumble. Instead of answering the question, Cole turned to the filing cabinets, found the drawer marked W, and pulled it out. Sure enough, there was a file marked WHITTEN. Cole returned to the table, sat, and opened the folder. A male baby boy with severe burn injuries had also been brought to the agency by the same state-run organization on what appeared to be the same day as when Cole was received, although it wasn’t clear that they arrived together. Adoption took longer for little Charles. It wasn’t until February 1949 that the Whittens took “Charlie” home with them. Cole noted their address as being in the Lower East Side. It was not an ideal part of the city. At the time, it was an area of low-income families, mostly immigrants. Gregory Whitten was employed as a janitor. No job was listed for Gayle. Cole imagined that Charlie had a rough upbringing.
Maybe that’s why he’d become a murderer.
Oh my God, I said it. Or, rather, I thought it.
In 1969, though, the murders hadn’t happened yet.
Still seated, Cole looked at his brother, who, surprisingly, still stood there against the back wall. “Charlie…are you really here in the year 1969, or are you here, like me, from the year 1985?”
“I could ask you the same question. Are you really here in 1969, or are you here from the year 1985?”
“I’m in a memory.”
“Are you really?”
Cole felt a shiver run down his spine.
Then Charlie said, “You know, I’ve been looking for you, too. We have a connection. We were in the womb together. Did you know I hated you then?”
“You hated me in the womb? How is that possible?”
“I hated you then, and I hate you now. You’ve had a good life, and I haven’t. I think I’m going to end yours.”
“I didn’t have a good life at all. I’ve been miserable for most of it. I’ve even played Russian Roulette, probably hoping the magic bullet would come up. And, besides, you did end my life. You killed me in 1985.”
Charlie grinned beneath the white mask, which covered only the top half of his face. “Perhaps you can try and stop me from doing that.”
A woman’s scream in the distance startled Cole. He turned his head toward the door. “What was that?” He then looked back at his brother…who wasn’t there…
… And then neither was he. The RECORDS room at the orphanage faded into nothingness as Cole’s consciousness returned to his Hotel Destiny office. He was still sitting behind his desk, an empty glass and a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s in front of him.
The woman’s scream, however, was real, and it was coming from Laurence Flynn’s old office, just down the hall from his own.
20
Cole jumped from his seat and ran into the corridor outside his office. He immediately knew that he was once again in a different time and year. The screaming was indeed coming from Laurence Flynn’s old office—the manager’s abode.
There was a startling crash that shook the walls, and then the door flew open and Miranda Flynn emerged. She was not yet the overweight Miranda he had seen in 1948 in the apartment bedroom with the cribs, so it was surely an earlier year in the timeline. Something was terribly wrong, though. She had a bloody nose and her face was red—from being hit, most likely.
“I hate you!” she yelled back into the office and then ran into the employee stairwell by the dumbwaiter.
Curly Chadwick stormed out of the office after her. “Come back here! I’m talking to you! Don’t you run away from me!” Despite Chadwick’s size and bulk, he was surprisingly agile and quick on his feet. At first, he was unsure where Miranda had fled. He peered into the lobby from behind the reception desk and barked at the employee there, “Where did she go?” The underling, trembling with fear, pointed to the employee stairwell. Chadwick bolted for it and disappeared inside.
Cole had been frozen in place during all this, but now he leapt into action. He couldn’t let that brute hit his mother again. He opened the stairwell door and followed the gangster up the flight to the kitchen. When he got there, the staff were cowering against the walls as Miranda picked up a china coffee cup and threw it at Chadwick. He dodged it and it crashed against a cabinet next to Cole.
“You’re not to so much as look at another man!” Chadwick shouted at her.
“Go to hell, Curly! Leave me alone!”
He lunged across the space at her, but she managed to avoid him, pick up a large cutting knife, and hold it defensively in front of her. “Stay away, Curly! Leave me alone!”
“I saw you making eyes at him! What’s going on between you two? Huh? Answer me!”
She made stabbing motions with the knife. “I’ll cut you, Curly, I swear I will!”
“Oh, you’re going to cut me, are you? Just try, slut! That’s what you are! You’re a slut!”
“HEY!”
Cole shouted at them, not knowing if he was visible or not. Chadwick, though, flinched and turned to him. “Who the hell are you?”
Yep. He was visible. Miranda focused on him, her eyes wild with terror and anger, and then confusion. The crease in her brow indicated she recognized him…from somewhere.
“I’m the hotel detective!” Cole announced. “Leave her alone.”
“You’re not the goddamned hotel detective. I don’t know who the hell you are.” The big man moved forward with the force of a bull, but Cole was ready for him. His years of boxing lessons, bar brawling, and New York street smarts paid off.
Cole delivered a powerful sledgehammer punch to Chadwick’s nose. The man’s head bobbed, he blinked several times, and then he lost his balance and fell backward to the floor. He wasn’t down for the count, though. The tough guy immediately started to get up, but Cole moved in and kicked Chadwick in the jaw. The gangster’s skull slammed hard into the tile floor…and he was out.
Cole looked around. The staff had fled the kitchen, but he zoomed in on a calendar affixed to the wall near the food preparation area. March 1946.
1946? Really?
Miranda stood in front of him with the knife still in her hand, breathing heavily, her eyes bulging at what she had just witnessed. Blood was still seeping out of her nose, covering her mouth and chin. Cole glanced at the kitchen sink, saw a wet cloth, and grabbed it. He moved toward Miranda, saying, “Here, put this on your—”
“Keep away from me!” she spat.
Cole held up his arms, the rag limp in his hand. “I mean you no harm, Miranda. You’re bleeding.”
“I know you, don’t I! How do I know you?”
“We’ve…met a few times before.”
She backed away a few feet, genuinely frightened of him. “I do remember you. You were at the New Year’s Eve party. We danced together. When was that? When was that?”
“New Year’s Eve going into 1936.”
Miranda spoke accusatorially, as if he had done something horrible. “And I saw you before that! When I was a teenager! Right?”
“Yes. That was 1930. We’re going to see each other again in 1948.”
“You look the same! What are you? What are you? Are you one of the ghosts? Are you a ghost? Don’t come near me!”
Cole continued to hold up his hands. “I just want to help.” He gestured with his head toward the unconscious Chadwick on the floor. “Miranda, you need to get away from this man. He’s running a brothel out of the hotel and he’s involved in other organized crime activities.”
She made a face and spit out her words. “I know that! Get out of here before his lapdogs find you here and see what you’ve done. They’ll kill you first and ask questions later!”
Ha. I’m already dead, so that’s not going to work.
As if on cue, Shake—Chadwick’s right-hand man—and two other heavies burst into the kitchen from the stairwell. There was a moment suspended in time as the men saw their boss on the floor, the boss’ girlfriend with a bloody nose and a knife, and a stranger in a tuxedo who appeared to be the instigator of whatever had happened.
Shake removed a gun from a shoulder holster under his jacket.
Cole spun and threw the wet cloth into Shake’s face. The pistol went off, propelling a round into the floor, but then Shake clumsily dropped the weapon. Cole acted quickly, bounded over Chadwick, who was beginning to stir with accompanying groans, and then slugged the man nearest to the stairwell door. With him tumbling away, Cole was able to dart out of the kitchen before the men could register what had just occurred.
Now, which way to go? Traverse the access corridor to the ballroom foyer, or go through the swinging doors to the ballroom itself?
He chose the latter and rushed into the empty Grand Room, where chairs were stacked on top of tables, as they always were between events. As he ran across the dance floor, he realized what a mistake he’d made. The only way out was to the foyer anyway, but by the time he decided to reverse course, the men had erupted into the ballroom behind him. Guns blazed and filled the room with surprisingly loud, reverberating chaos.
Cole pushed over one of the tables so that it sat on edge, the top perpendicular to the floor. The chairs went flying. He skirted around and used the tabletop as cover, hiding him from view.
No one can see me! Be invisible! he willed. I’m a ghost! I can’t be seen!
“Look, he went behind that table!”
“What is he, stupid?”
“Come out from behind there, buster!” Shake shouted.
Cole sat in a fetal position, his arms covering his head.
Uh oh…
With three guns pointed in front of them, the men moved around to the other side of the table and fired, delivering several rounds of hot lead…and then the barrage abruptly stopped.
“Hey! He’s not here!”
“What happened to him?”
“He went behind this table! I saw him! You saw him, right?”
“Yeah, I saw him.”
“Then where’d he go?”
The men looked around, completely baffled.
“The boss ain’t going to like this.”
“Come on, let’s keep looking for him.”
One man continued to search the ballroom, although it was clear their prey wasn’t in there. The other two headed out the doors to the foyer.
Cole had felt the bullets hit his body, but there had been no pain. He patted himself, looked down, touched where the thumps had struck him, and his clothing was perfectly intact.
Whaaaat?
He turned his head to look at the tabletop. It was perforated with eight bullet holes. The rounds had gone right through him.
Holy shit. So that’s what happens if I’m shot. Jesus, I’m invincible!
No, he thought again. That wasn’t true. He was dead. As dead as roadkill on the side of a highway. Dead as a gazelle in the jaws of a lion. Dead as a mummy in a pharaoh’s tomb. Dead as….
Stop it. You’re being ridiculous.
Cole stood and brushed off his tux. As he left the ballroom, he thought about what he had witnessed. In 1946, apparently things were not rosy in the Chadwick household. He couldn’t recall if Miranda had married him—Cole didn’t think so. They had lived together in Room 302 beginning in 1933, when Chadwick helped Miranda re-open the hotel, through 1948, when a fire broke out in the apartment, killing her. What had happened to Curly? Cole couldn’t remember, or perhaps he didn’t know.
He had seen early on that their relationship was based on money and opportunity rather than any kind of genuine affection on Miranda’s part. Perhaps it was a sign of the times, the Great Depression and all that. Women had been forced to depend on men, whether it was an abusive arrangement or not.
The fact that she was his birth mother made it doubly worse. Cole felt sorry for her and wished he could do something about it. Unfortunately, he was coming to realize that he couldn’t change a damned thing in the timeline of history. He had no influence whatsoever. All he could do was observe and learn.
“Find your heritage,” Agnieszka had said.
It wasn’t called Hotel Destiny for nothing.
21
Still unseen, Cole left the ballroom as Chadwick’s bozos continued to search for him. Frustrated and angry, Cole decided that he needed some fresh air. From the twelfth floor, one was able to use the fire escape stairwell to climb the steps, open a hatch, and walk out onto the roof. Would that be accessible? He hadn’t been able to physically leave the building—the hurricane-like black winds always prevented him from doing so. Would they strike on top of the hotel? Only one way to find out.
Cole rang for the elevator, but riding the cars was risky. There was a portal in one of the two cars—and he’d already forgotten which one—and other bizarre things had happened when he’d stepped into the lift. This time, the gold doors opened, he stepped in and reached to press the button for the twelfth floor…and he hesitated.
See? Weird things always happen in these goddamned elevators!
For the first time in his experience at Hotel Destiny, there was a button for a thirteenth floor. However, the indicators above the doors still went up only to “12.”
Fine. What the hell….
He pressed the button and the doors closed. The lift behaved normally as it ascended to the top of the building. The floor indicators lit up as he passed each successive one…“4,” “5,” “6”…. Finally, the number “12” illuminated, but the elevator kept moving. A few seconds later, it stopped.
The doors opened to what appeared to be a hall of guest rooms, just like all the other floors in the hotel.
Cole stepped out of the elevator…
… and the noise of the helicopter was deafening in his ears. Fully equipped with a heavy backpack, helmet, and a brand new M16 A1 rifle, Cole landed feet first on the ground after performing a short jump from the Bell UH-1D Iroquois’ fuselage with nine other members of his squad. He instinctively ran low as the chopper remained “light on the skids.” It had landed long enough for the crewman to yell, “Belts,” followed by the men shouting the same thing in unison and unbuckling their seat belts. “Go!” was the next command, and the men had moved single file toward the front of the chopper and propelled themselves out the door. As the troops exited, the weight of the aircraft decreased and it rose a little. This allowed the pilot to fly out fast after dropping the men into the combat zone.
Holy shit, I’m back in Vietnam! I do NOT want to be here. I do NOT want to be here!
But he was.
The year had to be late 1969 or early 1970, when he was in the thick of it, assigned to a platoon in the 25th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army.
He had no idea what precise spot or mission he was on. Those years were all a blur to Cole. If you saw one part of the jungle, you saw it all. Up ahead, the trees and foliage were on fire. The sound of battle was in the near distance, not too far away. The rat-tat-tat of M16s and other weapons created a cacophony that was a soundtrack to Cole’s nightmares for many years following his discharge.
“How you doing over there, buddy?”
Cole looked to see who had spoken as they ran toward the “shit.” It was Tim! Tim Busby, his best and only friend in the army. While Cole had tended to remain a loner and had a reputation for being anti-social, Tim did, too, so it was natural that they had formed a bond.
“Where are we, again?” Cole shouted. “I’ve already forgotten the mission!”
Tim laughed. “You kill me, Cole!”
I won’t kill you, Tim. A boobytrap in Cambodia will. Not now, but later in the war. I will witness it, too, and it will be horrible.
The Sergeant First Class, whose name Cole couldn’t recall, signaled for the squad to hunker down at the edge of where the jungle became thick. Smoke from the fires made for tough visibility. The heat was unbearable, as the sun was beating down on them at what appeared to be twelve o’clock high. The ground was wet, though, as the jungle floor tended to be, and Cole remembered how he would sometimes grasp the cool mud and squeeze it, just to get a sense that not everything around him was in an oven. He did so now as the sergeant barked.
“The platoon is pinned-down about a klick away. Our job is to reinforce. Let’s go, and if you see anything not dressed in a U.S. army uniform, kill it!”
The men shouted an affirmative, the sarge waved them on, and they began to move through the dense brush. Cole felt as if he were on autopilot, going through the motions, following the maneuvers of Tim and his fellow grunts.
Why am I here? What “lesson” am I supposed to learn revisiting this godforsaken place?
Still, the familiar sensation of being totally alert was back. Being in Vietnam was like a 24/7 hit of cocaine. Every nerve ending was always ready to ignite, even in those moments when he managed to get some precious sleep. It was a continuous psychedelic whirlwind of noise, sweat, heat, and violence.
They ran from cover to cover, keeping an eye out for figures darting through the forest. It wasn’t long, though, before the men came upon the first group of corpses. First there were two. Then there were five. When they found seven other dead soldiers dressed in U.S. army gear, the men knew they were too late.
