IN ROOM 33 by EC Sheedy Read Free Book Online Page B

to the table.
    "Farther back." Christian said. "Put it nearer the window. Right where it was."
    Gordy did as he was told and came back to stand in front of Christian. He didn't ask who the man in the photo was, but Christian told him anyway. "That's a very old picture. It's Wade's grandfather, Joseph Emerson. We used to be business partners. But that was a long time ago."
    Gordy looked around the room, rubbed behind his ear. "Can I go now, Mr. Rupert? My Mom's waitin'."
    "If there's nothing else you can think to tell me, you can go. But come back this afternoon at five. All right?"
    "Yes, sir." The boy didn't waste time, headed straight for the door.
    "No earlier. No later," Christian reminded him, as he always did.
    "Yes, sir," he said again and slammed the door behind him.
    Christian was disappointed. With Stephen Emerson dead, changes were coming to the Philip. The quake and quiver of them rose from below, inevitable and threatening. His source said not to worry, but worry was what he did best. Worry and plan. He hadn't expected much from the man-child, of course. But he'd hoped to draw him out, tap into any information he might have overheard. Information that might prove useful as the days progressed.
    Somewhat agitated, he glanced out the window and settled his gaze on the large, tree-filled planters on his rooftop terrace. They needed cutting back, watering. It was time to call Mike in for some work. Mike would talk, answer his questions—not like Sinnie, who came and went from his home like a ghost.
    Yes. Mike would know what was going on. And if he didn't, he'd find out. Christian would see to that.
    Silly old fool, he said to himself, settling deeper into his chair, trying to learn something from Gordy, a man whose brain was still in short britches. What would he know about the Hotel Philip... or Christian's abiding feelings for Joseph Emerson? And why would the boy in him care? He let his head rest against his chair back and closed his deep-set eyes.
    So long ago. Why would anyone care?
    Except him. Christian cared. And Christian remembered.
    All of it... the stir of desire, the fire of ambition, the searing heat of passion—and the trust invested so deeply, so naively, in youthful dreams.
    All of it... destroyed, ground under the heel of a heartless, uncaring man.
    Hatred, like love, had a long shelf life.
    And hatred was his friend. It kept Christian alive. It kept him sane—or his version of it.
    And it kept him amused.
    * * *
    Joy stood outside the Hotel Philip and looked up. The morning was gray, the hotel grayer. Not the color, that was buff brick, soiled, tired, and showing every decade of its neglect. No, the grayness was in the Phil's attitude, that of a distinguished old gentlemen, once proud and natty, now self-conscious in torn pants and scuffed shoes.
    The city's pigeons had accented the Phil's decline with their personal brand of scorn, leaving guano to lie like dirty snow over the arched windows on either side of the broad, once-grand entrance. One of the windows was half boarded up and a graffiti artist had been hard at work on the free wooden canvas, drawing ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM and trailing it with wild, wavelike curls in greens and reds. A neon sign was fitted, like a misplaced suture, into the alcove above the door. Buzzing and blinking in a phosphorous blue, it proclaimed Hotel Ph—ip to anyone interested in an introduction. Joy guessed not many were.
    Nothing about the Hotel Philip ZOOMed.
    It was much—much!—worse than she remembered.
    And it was all hers, a woman who owned only what she could carry and rented the rest and who hadn't spent more than six months in any one place in too many years to count. She shook her head. Stephen Emerson had one wicked sense of humor.
    She scanned the hotel front again and swallowed. What a waste. Neglect, a thousand sins of omission, and this was the forlorn result. No doubt the Hotel Philip might have been a charmer in its day, but its day was past.
    She