He shrugs. “Not having enough time. Maybe you should use the door.”
“Not going in there again unless I have to,” I tell him. “And who’s to say electronics even work in there?”
“Fair, fair…” he says. Then he leaps up and tears for the door. “I have an idea.”
While I wait, I look around the office. At the clutter and the dust and the lesbian Sicilian flag, which has been up so long that, even in here without any sunlight, it’s starting to fade. The lotto ticket, the lucky one he figured was going to change his fortune, still taped to the bottom of the screen. I pull it off and hold it.
Wouldn’t it be funny if it won? Well, not funny. Ironic maybe. Would that count as irony? What would I even do with the money? Did Reg have family? I should find out. I’d give it to them. I’m about to ask Ruby if Reg had any next of kin when the door opens and Brandon comes in with Cameo, who pauses on the threshold and throws up an eyebrow at me. “A lot of people are looking for you.”
They enter the room tentatively, and I stand, tell them, “I apologized to Mbaye. I apologized to Brandon. And now I’m apologizing to you. I know it doesn’t erase my behavior and I have a lot to make up for. But I’m going to try.”
Cameo says, “It’s a start.”
They maneuver around me and fold their lanky frame into the seat, type at the keyboard, and the desktop opens.
“Just like that?” I ask.
“Have you ever seen the man type? He pecks at the keyboard with two fingers. It was ‘Sicily’ with ones replacing the I’s.”
“Lord,” I say.
“Time to get to work,” Ruby says, then windows cascade across the desktop, until finally it stops on a series of pages that look like bills. “So we have a series of pretty serious issues here. I know who was messing with the video system.”
That lands like a hard fist on my ribs. “Are you serious? It was Reg?”
“Not directly, but as manager he had full admin access, and he handed over his security key to someone.”
Brandon and Cameo look at me like I’m supposed to say something, but I got nothing right now.
“There’s more,” Ruby says. “I reviewed the electrical bills, which, yes, are nearly triple what we’re supposed to be paying. But there are numerous other irregularities. Other bills that don’t match up with official records. While we’ve been led to believe the hotel has been losing money, it’s actually been turning a profit. It seems Reg was using creative accounting to make the hotel look like it was in financial trouble.”
I sit on the corner of the desk, stare at the wall. “Why did he make it look like the hotel was tanking?”
“Because if it wasn’t, there would be nothing to sell off,” Cameo says.
“Who was Reg communicating with?”
“I can’t say,” Ruby says. “I have detected the remnants of encrypted messages. I can’t locate the source or read the content. His personal financial records don’t indicate any large infusions of cash. Rather, he barely has a thousand dollars between his personal checking and savings.”
No infusions of cash.
But if Reg was gaming the system for someone, there had to be a payoff.
A payoff from someone who has already proved themselves adept at messing with time.
I look down at the lotto ticket, the paper now getting slightly damp in my sweaty palm. I check the date on the ticket, then hold it up so Ruby can scan it. “This is from a week ago.”
“It’s a winner,” Ruby says. “There was only one other winner on this pot, which means Reg would have been in line to receive approximately five hundred and fifty million dollars. Before taxes.”
Brandon lets out a low, impressed whistle.
He must have been waiting to cash it until all the nonsense around here settled. It makes my heart hurt. Because it means Reg was a part of this conspiracy. I get that the guy had his flaws, but I liked him. Hell, I looked up to him. He had a tough job and he got through it without murdering anyone, which is definitely something I’ve struggled with myself.
As if on cue, Reg comes walking in.
I know it’s not Reg. I know it’s a slip. That familiar little buzz in my brain. So I barely notice it. But then I look at Brandon and Cameo, who are staring, wide-eyed, mouths open.
Reg doesn’t regard us. He crosses the room and goes over to a file cabinet and starts rifling through it. Cameo and Brandon look at me, and we share a brief glance, only to look back and find that Reg is gone.
“Jesus,” Brandon says. “Is that what it’s like? When it happens to you?”
“All the time.”
Brandon nods, and Cameo folds their hands in prayer. I think they get it. What it’s like to constantly be surrounded by the dead. What it means when they seem to follow you.
How can you let go when you’re given a choice?
I almost want to say this out loud. But I’m not ready. Not yet.
The greater concern here is why is this happening?
“January,” Ruby says. “There’s something you need to see.”
A web browser comes up, playing a news report. Cellphone footage of soldiers in period garb shooting muskets at each other amidst tombstones, smoke curling into the air. The camera shakes and has a hard time focusing and the battle rages for a couple of seconds before disappearing into thin air.
“The world is baffled by the events that took place in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn today, where it seems visitors were witnesses to the infamous Battle of Brooklyn. But this was not a reenactment. It seems as though the battle, which took place in August 1776, was happening in real time, before vanishing.”
The sound drops out and Ruby says, “This isn’t the only report of time slipping. I’m scanning the news and finding reports around New York, and into neighboring states. It seems as though whatever is happening here is spreading.”
“Yeah, that’s not good,” Brandon says.
“This is it,” I tell them. “Someone made changes that were too big, and now they’re rippling out.”
“How do we fix it?” Brandon asks.
“You’re the one with the degree.”
“Shit, man, we never covered this one…”
I exhale. “We kill the alligator closest to the boat. Someone paid off Reg to make sure this hotel was tanking, and Drucker is involved to some degree. These things we know.”
But there’s something else tugging at me. Scratching at the back of my head. I keep thinking about the storage closet. The world beyond it.
And the room next door.
Westin.
Schr?dinger’s corpse.
Which I could see, and no one else could.
Yes, the slips in the hotel are becoming that much more extreme. But what if there’s a reason I can more easily see the ghosts? Why am I the only one who can see Westin’s body?
I know what the answer is here. I don’t want to say it but I know what it is. I rattle the bottle of Retronim in my pocket. Take it out and remove a tab, break it in half and touch an end of it to my tongue. Tastes like aspirin, not sugar.
“What are we going to do?” Brandon asks.