I thought: How am I going to make him understand me? He might know a word or two of English; most of them down here seemed to. I tried to remember whether he’d used any in accosting the two of us at Sloppy’s, but I couldn’t any more. Too much had happened since.
He must be asleep long ago. I knocked again, a little less tactfully.
Money would do it. Money talks in any language. But I didn’t have any. I’d left my roll with Midnight. Well, all else failing, I had a pair of persuaders down at the end of my arms. If I couldn’t talk to him — and I had no money that could talk to him — they’d have to talk to him. But I’d only use them as a language of last resort.
I hadn’t been able to rouse him yet. I pummeled good and loud this time. And waited. And still he didn’t come. I tried the door, but that was too much to hope for, that I’d just be able to walk in like that, at will.
I pounded some more. This time I hit it on all cylinders. It went rolling down through the slumbering house, hollow and distorted, like thunder that had strayed in some way and was trying to find its way out again. Then it tapered off, but only long after I’d quit knocking.
A door opened somewhere down below, and a woman shouted up shrilly: “¡Callese!” Shut up up there, I suppose. Then she waited, to see if I was going to do it again. I wasn’t and I didn’t. If he’d been in there he would have heard me by now. She slammed inside again finally, simmering to herself.
I gave her a minute or two to go back to sleep. Then I struck a match and examined the door. I wasn’t going to give up. I hadn’t come all the way across Havana to turn around and go away again, no better off than I had been before.
It had a transom over it of dust-pearled glass. It wasn’t down quite flat; it was teetered in about a quarter of an inch out of its frame. But the thing was, it wasn’t a fixed panel, a fanlight. If it went up a quarter of an inch, it could be made to go up farther than that. It must be moveable, must work on a hinge or rod of some sort.
Scott was going to get in there.
I aimed for the bottom of its frame with the heels of both my hands, sprang for it, missed getting a fast enough hold, and dropped back again. I aimed again, sprang again, this time caught on and swayed there. I got my foot on the doorknob, and that gave me a brace. I nudged into the panel with my shoulder, and it moved quite easily, almost flapped back loosely. The hinge must have been broken. It came back each time, but that didn’t matter; at least it didn’t stick.
I got my head down in through it and was looking at the dark upside down. Then I worked one shoulder and arm through and let myself go farther. I was afraid to let go altogether and just drop. I would have landed headfirst and might have knocked myself out. More important, the crash might bring up someone from the floor below to investigate.
I located the inside knob with one acutely downstretched arm and then found a cross-latch just above it. In tight, so he must still be in there, because that sort of latch could be worked only from the inside. I felt like a clothespin, with my rump riding the transom. I slipped the latch grip over and then had to work myself back outside again. Which wasn’t as easy as getting in. Once I thought I wasn’t going to make it and would have to hang there suspended the rest of the night. The back of my head kept hitting the transom and closing it down on my own neck.
I finally got out again and dropped down to the floor outside and then went in the way you’re supposed to through any door, head uppermost and feet to the ground.
It reminded me a little of when I’d busted into Midnight’s room an hour or two back — or was it a year ago now? Only this was even darker. There wasn’t even a red cigarette glint this time. It was like being tangled up on the wrong side of a heavy black velvet curtain and trying to cuff your way out through it. Except that you couldn’t feel velvet folds in front of you; you could just feel plain black air.
I thought: He’s got to be here because the latch was shot home on the inside of the door. And yet how could he be and still fail to hear that drubbing I’d given the door?
I was going to light a match first, but then I realized that wouldn’t show me much; it would only show him me, if he was here. If his work was photography, even third-rate photography, there must be electricity in the place. I turned and started to measure off the wall alongside the doorframe, hand over hand. When I’d gone up about as high as my shoulder I quit and did it on the other side. There wasn’t anything on either side.
I started forward a few paces, trying to get to room center, so I’d be able to get my match’s worth, as long as I had to use one. I think I had about two left by this time out of the whole double fistful I’d brought away from Midnight’s place.
All of a sudden something tickled the rim of my ear. I thought it was a mosquito or gnat for a minute and swerved my head, but then it came back on the other side. I clawed out in a sort of stifled fright, and something pulled tight across the edge of my hand, caught, and then clicked at the other end. The light I’d been looking for went on straight over my head, in a sort of blinding cascade, and I was holding the other end of the dangling string that worked it.
I couldn’t use my eyes for a minute after so much darkness. Then I took the back of my hand away, and they went to work again.
I didn’t like what I saw.
8
It was just a small attic room, about what you’d expect for a shoestring-photographer’s studio. It had no windows, but the ceiling broke in the middle; on one side of this central seam it was level and at full room height; on the other it sloped downward in a sort of gable effect, and the end wall was only about shoulder-high. In this sloped section there was a skylight vent. That was one of the things I didn’t like the looks of.
It had been glassed over, but the glass was all out, except for a spiny fringe around the edges, and you could see stars needling the black up above it. Directly underneath the gap the floor was all twinkling and littered with shards of broken glass. That meant unlawful entry. Then there was a straight-backed chair standing there in position right under the rent, and that meant unlawful exit again. It had been moved over after the glass had already fallen through, because its seat was clean; there were no particles a-twinkle on it such as even a brushing off would have left.
It was easy enough to read the little still life. Somebody had jumped down through the skylight, feet first. Somebody had climbed up out through it again, using the chair for a stepladder.
It looked like there had been a fight, or at least some kind of strenuous resistance, in between the two events. Two other chairs like the first that he’d had in there were lying toppled flat on their backs, and a couple of the legs of one were badly fractured. The portable tripod he carried around with him was lying there on the floor, smashed, and with all its guts spilled out, as though somebody had been trying to wrench it apart in a hurry to get the plates out, or it had been plentifully stepped on in the course of a struggle.
A couple of sample portraits that he’d had tacked on the walls as a decoration had slipped their moorings, jarred out of true by the vibration. One had dropped down all the way; the other still clung tenuously by one corner.
That about finished the front room, or at least the main part of it, that he’d used for posing his subjects. There was, however, a curtain strung across one entire side of it, to my left as I came in, subdividing the already modest space into two unequal parts. It had, strangely enough, not been disturbed, or, if it had, had fallen back into proper place again without revealing any trace of it.
I went over to it, jerked it aside, and looked through. Behind it there was just an alcove, a small rectangle that he used as a combination darkroom, for developing his plates, and sleeping quarters. There was a cot crowded into it, and then there was an ordinary built-in washbasin against the wall that he used for a developing tank. It was still full of solution, but there were no pictures soaking in it when I stuck my hand in and felt carefully all around the sides and bottom.