Security(38)

The Thinker has tired of solitaire. He is standing at the wall that faces east. The walls on the twentieth floor are all glass, but tinted glass, and the eastward view includes the hedge maze, crescent--shaped driveway, a road, desert, mountains, river, and sky. Now, in the dark, these things are dim outlines. The Thinker stands with his hands behind his back. He is not tall, but neither is he short. Not fat, not thin, not muscular, but not skinny. He is average, whereas his accomplice is very large. He is the brains, whereas his accomplice is the brawn.

It is rare for a man to have both. It is not necessarily vain for a man to consider himself rare, if it is the truth.

Jules and Justin disembark on the eighteenth floor. He unlocks Room 1801, the regular penthouse. They enter, the door shuts behind them, and Jules sucks in a breath to say something.

“Don’t,” Justin says. “Let’s—don’t.”

Jules trails him to the spacious living room, where Justin plucks the remote from a cherrywood end table and points it at the television. Jules steals it from him.

“We have to. We need to talk about it,” she says, sounding meek.

Justin walks to the stairs. Under the stairs is a bookshelf, and behind the bookshelf is the hollow maw of the secret elevator. Jules catches Justin’s arm. He shakes her off, but he stays there, one hand on the railing. “Not tonight.”

“When?” says Jules.

“Tomorrow.”

Justin walks upstairs to their nondeluxe bedroom. Jules lets her hand fall and holds the railing where he held it, feeling the warmth of him and thinking—it’s a legitimate assumption—about tomorrow. Justin will wake before her; he always does. Jules will meet him at whatever stunning experimental breakfast Henri prepares. She and Justin will ooh and ahh, relieved there isn’t time for solitude and reprieved from the pressure to talk about it; they will be afraid because there’s plenty of space—there’s so much space in the world—and the two of them and their struggles and their failings are so small, and the end of their marriage will make not a ripple in the greater ocean of human events.

Jules puts the remote control back on the end table. She squares it to a perfect right angle before sitting on the sofa, pressing the “Power” button. The flat screen blinks on, already set to her desired channel. Jules curls up, pops a pill, and watches E! News.

Brian has been watching Tessa’s free hand. Tessa’s free hand has hit the “Up” button four times, and each time, her free hand returns to a spot above her left nipple, which she touches like it’s simply something to touch. Brian’s shifting where he stands, as if the fit of his pants is becoming uncomfortable. He looks around the foyer. “So, is there a ton of video surveillance in the hotel?”

“Some,” says Tessa. “Not in the rooms, not in the elevator.”

The best security is invisible security.

Brian repeats, “Not in the elevator,” and massages her nonfree hand.

Tessa presses the “Up” button. Twice.

Delores doesn’t hear the Killer letting the kitchen door swing closed behind him, the rap--rap rap--rap it makes when it flaps against its rubberized frame. He doesn’t make a sound coming closer to her—

“I’m scared,” Brian says, “that it’s going to be weird.”

Tessa nods. “Me, too.”

“We’ve never even kissed.” The pointed bottom of the diamond--shaped elevator appears. He squeezes Tessa’s hand.

“I know,” Tessa says. “What do we do if it’s weird?”

“I don’t know.” The elevator dings open. He and Tessa get on. Tessa swipes her card key in a special slot. “What’s that for?” Brian says.

“The elevator won’t stop at the penthouse level unless the guest swipes their key,” she says. She says it breathlessly. “It’s a security measure.” She’s turned toward Brian.

He turns toward her. He still has her hand. He puts it where his pulse beats visibly in his neck. “If this is weird, I say we just—”

“Keep going,” Tessa finishes for him, and laughs.

He laughs. “Yeah, exactly. Don’t be a quitter.”

“Never,” Tessa says, and strokes down his front, to his chest. He shivers. “I’m like the rabbit who wanted to cross the road.”

“Staples. That’s determination, Tess.”

She crooks her finger: C’mere.

He leans.

But Delores cleans a mean window. The Killer makes a reflection, approaching behind her back. So Delores turns with her oversized squeegee right when he’s in range of its length and smacks him with the wet end across his mask. The Killer gurgles a syllable—Gluh!”—and catches his mask and straightens it before it falls off. In doing this, he drops his knife.

Delores catches him again on the reverse. The Killer sputters. Delores is saying, “Franklin, I told you if you kept messing with me, I’d make you real sorry,” but this slap of the squeegee makes the Killer’s mask fly all the way off, to his right. He chases after it as Delores says, “Hey, who’re you?”





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The drawbacks of video surveillance are two-fold: one, even if a fabulously wealthy properties owner claims to be dedicated to security, the budget for actual cameras will be finite and, therefore, the number of angles available to team members will be limited, which means that if, for example, a remorseless psycho killer is briefly unmasked, it will be a matter of luck if his face is clearly discernible; two, though the preening, spoiled properties owner requests all security feed be backed up for six months on an online storage site before the images are disposed of, he is ignorant of how vulnerable online storage sites are to external penetration, meaning the head of security might decide instead to erase the feed at six thirty a.m. and six thirty p.m. every day, choosing these times because shifts change at six a.m. and six p.m. and at those hours, when the shifts cross, team members discuss scenarios, breaches, so on, which the feed helps to illustrate.