No roof on it, only a yoke supported by heavy steel cables that snaked up into the yawning darkness overhead.
Couldn’t see a thing up there. The building’s power was off and the generator-powered work lights in the office only cast shadows in the elevator. Grabbing a flashlight off my worktable, I played it around overhead.
An empty shaft, three stories, straight up. Couldn’t see a landing on the next floor up. Or even the one above that. Apparently this elevator went from the basement to the top floor. Which made no sense at all. Why go to all this trouble to conceal it?
No floor numbers on the controls, just three buttons: up, down, stop. I glanced around, wondering how many years ago this relic had been boxed in, and why. I absently tapped one of the buttons — and the elevator lurched upward!
Stumbling back, I banged off the wall and went down. The elevator cage was still climbing upward, bucking beneath me like a ship in a hurricane. Somewhere in the dark a lift motor was howling like a mad thing, straining to shift rusty cables as stiff as steel beams. Naked light bulbs flared to life in the shaft overhead, revealing quivering wire ropes, then exploding, raining down fiery sparks and broken glass.
The cage was shaking so fiercely I couldn’t get to my feet. So I crawled across the bucking floor on hands and knees, groping for the off switch—
With a deafening bang, something snapped. The cage floor dropped out from under me, plunging six or eight feet before jerking to a halt, slamming me into the floor face-first, knocking my wind out.
And then I was scrambling desperately to get out of the way as the elevator cable came whistling down out of the dark, crashing into the cage, whirling around like a crazed snake, gouging the walls and floor as it coiled and recoiled on itself.
Its jagged head tore into my jeans, slashing my leg open — and then, suddenly, everything stopped. I sat up slowly, my head ringing like an alarm bell, shin on fire, blood oozing through my torn Levi’s.
Puck’s face appeared in the opening above, ashen, wide-eyed.
“Danny? You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Don’t know that, either.” Swallowing, I took a deep breath, then got slowly to my feet, taking inventory. Both arms and legs worked all right, no bones broken. Left shoulder was sore as hell where I landed on it.
Checked my leg. The ragged end of the broken cable had sliced a five-inch gash across my shin. Bleeding pretty good, but it didn’t look too deep. Shin cuts always bleed a lot.
Okay. Working construction, hard knocks come with the territory. I was banged up, but not seriously. No thanks to the Belknap Building. That broken steel cable could just as easily have taken off my head.
“Danny?”
“I’m okay, Puck. The freakin’ building just tried to kill me, is all.”
“What happened?”
“Damned if I know. I hit the switch and the elevator kicked on but the cables were too rusty to take the strain. One snapped. Cage dropped half a story before the automatic brakes grabbed it.”
“What do you mean, it kicked on? There’s no juice in here. The mains are disconnected, all the power to the building is completely off.”
“All I know is this cage jumped the second I hit the switch. Motor sounded like it was above me, so there must be juice up there somewhere and we’d better find it before somebody gets fried. I’ve had enough surprises out of this place. Slide a ladder down here before this damned cage drops me into the basement!”
No need to see a doctor. Mafe Rochon patched me up. Mafe is Ojibwa, full-blood. Hard drinker, serious bar-fighter, a major attitude case. We’ve tangled more than once. I put up with him because he’s, swear to God, a genius with a torch. Mafe can cut metal or join it together so seamlessly you can scarcely see the line. But when you hire Mafe for his talent, his craziness comes with the deal.
As a bonus, I got an on-the-job medic, a skill Mafe picked up in the army before they booted him out. He’s a fair hand at patching people back together. He’s even better at busting them up.
Mafe was taping up my leg when Olympia Belknap showed up for her daily update.
“My God,” she said, paling at my ragged, bloodstained jeans. “What happened?”
“Nothing heavy. Broken cable. On the upside, I solved our bogus floor-plan problem. There’s a false wall at the east end of the building that conceals a freight elevator. Looks like there’s another false wall at the opposite end, too. Puck’s up on the roof, trying to find a way down...”
I broke off, listening to a strange shuffling sound. Footsteps, coming closer. From somewhere inside the walls.
Easing down off the table, I walked down the corridor, listening, as the footsteps drew closer. Mafe and Pia followed.
The sound stopped. So did I. Facing a blank wall.
“Danny?” Puck’s voice was muffled. “You out there?”
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“Back away from the wall, this thing’s nailed shut.” A couple of resounding kicks, and suddenly the wall burst outward. Swung open, actually. A concealed door, blended perfectly to match the paneling. Just inside, Puck was standing on a stairway, dusting himself off.
“Come on up,” he said quietly. “You’ve gotta see this.”
“The third and fourth floors are old hotel rooms,” he explained as we followed him up the stairway. “Once they sealed the doors off on the second floor, there was no other way up.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “They aren’t just closed off, they’re hidden.”
“You’ll see why in a minute.”
The stairway ended on the fifth-floor landing, facing a magnificent double door. Oaken, with leaded-glass panels.
I pushed through it, and stopped. Stunned.
It was a nightclub. A long, low-ceilinged room, filled with tables. A massive oaken bar at one end, bandstand at the other, facing a large dance floor with a mirrored ball turning slowly overhead, filling the room with swirling lights. Only a few lamps along the walls were still functional, but even in their wan glow, you could see how strange it all was.
The tables were still draped with dusty linen; some had plates, glasses, and silverware still in place, as though the revelers had just stepped out for a moment. Music stands still filled the stage, and there was a microphone up front. The bar still appeared to be stocked with liquor...
A long sigh filled the room. As though the building were taking a deep breath. It sounded so... human, we all took an involuntary step closer to each other.
Puck glanced the question at me, eyes wide.
“Probably the wind,” I shrugged. “Or maybe an air vent opening. The place has been closed up a long time.”
“It doesn’t look like it,” Olympia said, wandering slowly among the tables. “Except for the dust, it could have closed ten minutes ago. Look, some of the plates still have food on them, or what’s left of it. What happened here? Where did the people go?”
“It’s your building,” I said. “Don’t you know?”
“I’m not from Malverne; I never heard of this town before I married Bob. When I asked his grandfather about the problems with the floor plans, he just said to stay away from this building. That it’s a terrible place.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“I have no idea. I told you he’s a little drifty sometimes. That was all he’d say and it was the longest conversation I’ve had with him in months.”
“I see,” I nodded, though I really didn’t. “In that case, do you know anyone else we can ask?”
“It was called the Gin Mill,” Artie Cohen said, looking around the room, grinning like a schoolboy. He even looked like one, a gawky, fifty-year-old schoolboy with an unruly salt-and-pepper mop, sweater vest, and bow tie. Editor of the Malverne Banner, amateur historian. “My father told me about this place when I was a kid. I assumed it had all been torn out years ago.”