Other visitors during the current season include...
There was more but Jack only skimmed it, constantly wiping his lips with his hand. A banker with Las Vegas connections. Men from New York who were apparently doing more in the Garment District than making clothes. Men reputed to be involved with drugs, vice, robbery, murder.
God, what a story! And they had all been here, right above him, in those empty rooms. Screwing expensive whores on the third floor, maybe. Drinking magnums of champagne. Making deals that would turn over millions of dollars, maybe in the very suite of rooms where Presidents had stayed. There was a story, all right. One hell of a story. A little frantically, he took out his notebook and jotted down another memo to check all of these people out at the library in Denver when the caretaking job was over. Every hotel has its ghost? The Overlook had a whole coven of them. First suicide, then the Mafia, what next?
The next clipping was an angry denial of Brannigar's charges by Charles Grondin. Jack smirked at it.
The clipping on the next page was so large that it had been folded. Jack unfolded it and gasped harshly. The picture there seemed to leap out at him: the wallpaper had been changed since June of 1966, but he knew that window and the view perfectly well. It was the western exposure of the Presidential Suite. Murder came next. The sitting room wall by the door leading into the bedroom was splashed with blood and what could only be white flecks of brain matter. A blank-faced cop was standing over a corpse hidden by a blanket. Jack stared, fascinated, and then his eyes moved up to the headline.
GANGLAND-STYLE SHOOTING AT
COLORADO HOTEL
Reputed Crime Overlord Shot at Mountain Key Club
Two Others Dead
SIDEWINDER, COLO (UPI)-Forty miles from this sleepy Colorado town, a gangland-style execution has occurred in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
The Overlook Hotel, purchased three years ago as an exclusive key club by a Las Vegas firm, was the site of a triple shotgun slaying. Two of the men were either the companions or bodyguards of Vittorio Gienelli, also known as "The Chopper" for his reputed involvement in a Boston slaying twenty years ago.
Police were summoned by Robert Norman, manager of the Overlook, who said he heard shots and that some of the guests reported two men wearing stockings on their faces and carrying guns had fled down the fire escape and driven off in a late-model tan convertible.
State Trooper Benjamin Moorer discovered two dead men, later identified as Victor T. Boorman and Roger Macassi, both of Las Vegas, outside the door of the Presidential Suite where two American Presidents have stayed.
Inside, Moorer found the body of Gienelli sprawled on the floor. Gienelli was apparently fleeing his attackers when he was cut down. Moorer said Gienelli had been shot with heavy-gauge shotguns at close range.
Charles Grondin, the representative of the company which now owns the Overlook, could not be reached for...
Below the clipping, in heavy strokes of a ball-point pen, someone had written: They took his balls along with them. Jack stared at that for a long time, feeling cold. Whose book was this?
He turned the page at last, swallowing a click in his throat. Another column from Josh Brannigar, this one dated early 1967. He only read the headline: NOTORIOUS HOTEL SOLD FOLLOWING MURDER OF UNDERWORLD FIGURE.
The sheets following that clipping were blank.
(They took his balls along with them.)
He flipped back to the beginning, looking for a name or address. Even a room number. Because he felt quite sure that whoever had kept this little book of memories had stayed at the hotel. But there was nothing.
He was getting ready to go through all the clippings, more closely this time, when a voice called down the stairs: "Jack? Hon?"
Wendy.
He started, almost guiltily, as if he had been drinking secretly and she would smell the fumes on him. Ridiculous. He scrubbed his lips with his hand and called back, "Yeah, babe. Lookin for rats."
She was coming down. He heard her on the stairs, then crossing the boiler room. Quickly, without thinking why he might be doing it, be stuffed the scrapbook under a pile of bills and invoices. He stood up as she came through the arch.
"What in the world have you been doing down here? It's almost three o'clock!"
He smiled. "Is it that late? I got rooting around through all this stuff. Trying to find out where the bodies are buried, I guess."
The words clanged back viciously in his mind.
She came closer, looking at him, and he unconsciously retreated a step, unable to help himself. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to smell liquor on him. Probably she wasn't even aware of it herself, but he was, and it made him feel both guilty and angry.
"Your mouth is bleeding," she said in a curiously flat tone.
"Huh?" He put his hand to his lips and winced at the thin stinging. His index finger came away bloody. His guilt increased.