The Dead Gentleman Read Free Page B

some culpability for the twelve-year-old baby fat that was turning out
not
to be baby fat at all, and for her nearsightedness and tendency to freckle. In fact, she had a whole list of genetic complaints, but the actual child-rearing part he’d pulled off quite well. She’d told him that once, in those very words, and he’d kind of looked grim and defeated about it. Maybe he just didn’t know how to take a compliment.
    Jezebel tried once more to go online, but the storm had been messing with the Internet all morning and she waited five minutes just for her profile page to load. Cell phone reception was spotty as well. It was like living in the Stone Age. After the connection timed out twice, she gave up and grabbed her shoes instead.
    Time to check out the basement.
    The basement had been recently uncovered as part of the renovations. A small door in the corner of the lobby, long ago plastered over and forgotten, led to a basement that no one had seen for maybe eighty years or more. It must have been covered up when the old hotel was converted into apartments, although why anyone would go out of their way to wall off an entire basement was beyond Jez. But then again, that’s what made it interesting. It was mysterious. She thought it especially odd that the elevator had no B button, either. Whether it was accidental or deliberate, the basement had been hidden away for a long time. There was no telling what could be down there.
    Elevator Man smiled at her as she stepped inside. He was new and Jezebel was terrible with names, but the weather seemed to be his thing, and he was always ready with the forecast—today’s, tomorrow’s or the ten-day extended. It only made sense that today’s unusual storm was a topic of excitement. It was like a little holiday in Elevator Man’s world.
    “Winds are gusting close to thirty miles per hour,” he was saying. “Even though there
was
a zero-point-zero percent chance of any precipitation at all. Can’t get ’em all right, I guess. Going to be flash flood warnings all over the place, too. ’Course we don’t have to worry about that up here, but down in the subway tunnels? Boy, they better have those pumps working overtime, because …” He kept on about the ins and outs of subwaymaintenance as he smacked his gum. Jezebel had yet to see him when he wasn’t chewing on a wad of gum, and if he leaned too close you could be bowled over by the overpowering scent of wintergreen.
    “Um, excuse me,” Jezebel interrupted. She didn’t want to be rude, but he had a habit of talking
at
you rather than
with
you, and for exactly as long as it took to get from your floor to the lobby. If you wanted to get a word in at all, you needed to be bold about it. “I was wondering about the basement they just found,” Jezebel continued. “Do you know why there isn’t any button for it?”
    “Huh?” he answered, apparently thrown by the sudden shift from monologue to conversation. “There’s a basement?”
    “Yes,” said Jezebel. “Well, at least there’s a door in the lobby that leads down to somewhere.”
    “Awfully odd to build a brand-new elevator and not have it go all the way down, but that’s architects for you. If my elevator doesn’t stop there, then it’s not worth the trip. My advice is, stick to floors L through thirty.”
    At that moment the elevator stopped with a ding. “Ah, speaking of—here we are. Lobby,” he said as he opened the gated double doors.
    She smiled at Elevator Man as he disappeared back up the shaft, leaving her alone. Despite the gaudiness, the lobby was usually Jezebel’s favorite thing about her home. It was always such a bright place—sunlight glittered through the prism of a crystal chandelier, coloring the room in soft rainbow hues that reminded her of one of her dad’s paintings. Outside the open entrance, the doorman was always whistling.
    But today a pitiful few rays of sun managed to make it throughthe heavy rain clouds. Tarps had