The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(37)

“Excuse me, you can’t just—”

“Hold on a second.”

“You’ll have to sign in—”

Hazel watched the brass-plated elevator dial move—something she’d always wanted to do—and when it swung from M to 1 and stopped, she walked back across the lobby, proud of herself, though now really feeling that last drink. A female security guard in animal ears called to her from the front desk.

“Who you here to see?”

“Um, would it be possible to see the first floor? If I wanted to rent a space?”

The guard sighed and slid a card across the desk. “Call this number during the week.”

Hazel pocketed the card and looked around, wondering if there was a way to give the guard the slip, make a dash for the elevators.

“Anything else, ma’am?”

Hazel snatched a mini Reese’s from a pumpkin-shaped bowl. “No, thanks.”

Outside, she rounded the corner of the building and scanned the floor above the street for any lighted windows. Finding none, she sat down on a bus bench and slipped on her heels. What was she doing? Was she really going to stake out this guy? She felt the first spits of rain, and just as she was thinking of calling an Uber, a strange thing happened: a small fleet of Checker cabs appeared in the intersection. She wondered if she would see such a thing ever again, let alone in Los Angeles. Ever a sucker for the increasingly obsolete, she hailed one and asked the driver to take her back to Beachwood Canyon.

“Actually,” she said, shutting the door, “could you make it the Hotel d’Antibes on Foothill Drive?”

*

By the time they pulled up to the hotel, rain was lashing at the cab’s windows. Peering through the weeping glass, Hazel saw that the place had acquired a certain charm in the hours since she’d left it. The rooms glowed red from behind gossamer curtains, and the grounds were sculpted in arabesque shadow. She imagined that she saw a warm light coming from the direction of Isaac’s room, but she knew this was an illusion, as the eighth floor was set back from the street. She paid the driver and made a run for the entrance.

The lobby was empty and the concierge desk abandoned. She stepped across the acrid carpet and called the elevator, which took an entire minute to arrive. When the doors opened, she stepped in the car and felt inside a pocket of her purse to make sure the key card was still there. Then she hit the blank button.

“Hold the elevator, please,” a voice called from the lobby.

No, don’t think I will. She jabbed at Close Door, that placebo of buttons. Finally, the doors started to move, but it was too late because a man slipped through the narrowing gap—all soggy hair and sloppy Southern gentleman. Alex.

“Is there a room 137, by chance?” he asked breathlessly.

Hazel stepped back into a corner of the elevator, her neck growing prickly hot. Alex was trying his best not to smile, but the effort only made him look more satisfied with himself.

“Oh, and I’ve been wondering all night,” he said, leaning back against a mirrored wall. “Are you Tippi Hedren from The Birds or Kim Novak from Vertigo?”

“Why are you following me?”

“Well, Hazel,” he said, as the elevator began to move, “usually it’s the person behind the other person who’s doing the following.”

She started to respond but realized she had nothing to say.

“It’s fine, actually,” he continued. “I was hoping to draw somebody out. Tired of searching alone.”

Tired of searching alone? She wasn’t sure what he meant by this, but it did make her consider for a second that he, too, had received a message from Isaac. She wanted to ask him, but that would require a level of trust in Alex she wasn’t sure she had. Instead, her neck and ears still burning, she looked down at the book he had been carrying all night: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Eager to deflect some of her discomfort, she said, “Do you really think Twain would be caught dead carrying around his own book?”

Hazel detected a smile growing from behind his woolly mustache.

“Good point.”

It was at that moment she knew what was different about him. His beard was gone. His structured jaw, shiny with rain, was completely clean-shaven. She wondered how she had been able to recognize him at all.

“You’d make a disastrous detective,” he said, producing a miniature KitKat bar from his pocket. “I tailed you pretty easily after you left the Taft.”

“I thought you’d gotten in the elevator.”

“What, to room 137?” He shook his head. “I hid behind a planter after asking to use the bathroom. Anyway, I don’t think the Taft room numbers go up that high. I should know because for the past week, I’ve been scouring the entire city for that bleeding number.” He flashed the notebook tucked inside his jacket, as if this were ample evidence.

“Can I ask how you even knew to look for room 137?”

He waved his hand vaguely, as if the question were unimportant. “Isaac mentioned it once. He said it was his unofficial office or something.”

So Alex hadn’t gotten a letter. Or was he merely covering? The elevator stopped and opened onto the eighth floor.

“But I’m hoping that tonight,” he said, stepping out and registering the hall’s single door, “my search is done.”