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DEAN KOONTZ
77 Shadow Street
From here in the Nutland,
To Ed and Carol Gorman,
Out there in the Heartland,
With undiminished affection
after all these years.
O dark dark dark.
They all go into the dark…
—T. S. ELIOT, East Coker
Contents
Chapter 1: The North Elevator
Chapter 2: The Basement Security Room
Chapter 3: The Basement Pool
Chapter 4: Apartment 3-C
Chapter 5: Apartment 2-C
Chapter 6: Apartment 3-C
Chapter 7: Apartment 2-A
Chapter 8: Apartment 2-C
One
Chapter 9: Apartment 2-A
Chapter 10: The Basement Security Room
Chapter 11: Apartment 3-F
One
Chapter 12: Apartment 3-A
Chapter 13: Apartment 3-D
Chapter 14: Apartment 2-G
Chapter 15: Apartment 2-A
One
Chapter 16: Topper’s
Chapter 17: Apartment 3-D
Chapter 18: Apartment 1-C
Chapter 19: Apartment 2-G
Chapter 20: Apartment 3-F
One
Chapter 21: Here and There
One
Chapter 22: Apartment 2-F
Chapter 23: Apartment 3-H
One
Chapter 24: Here and There
One
Chapter 25: Topper’s
Chapter 26: Here and There
One
Chapter 27: Here and There
One
Chapter 28: Topper’s
Chapter 29: Here and There
One
Chapter 30: Here and There
One
Chapter 31: Here and There
One
Chapter 32: Here and There
One
Chapter 33: Here and There
One
Chapter 34: 77 Shadow Street
PART ONE Where the Shadows Gather
How slow the shadow creeps; but when ’tis pastHow fast the shadows fall. How fast! How fast!
—HILAIRE BELLOC, For a Sundial
The North Elevator
Bitter and drunk, Earl Blandon, a former United States senator, got home at 2:15 A.M. that Thursday with a new tattoo: a two-word obscenity in blue block letters between the knuckles of the middle finger of his right hand. Earlier in the night, at a cocktail lounge, he’d thrust that stiff digit at another customer who didn’t speak English and who was visiting from some third-world backwater where the meaning of the offending gesture evidently wasn’t known in spite of countless Hollywood films in which numerous cinema idols had flashed it. In fact, the ignorant foreigner seemed to mistake the raised finger for some kind of friendly hello and reacted by nodding repeatedly and smiling. Earl was frustrated directly out of the cocktail lounge and into a nearby tattoo parlor, where he resisted the advice of the needle artist and, at the age of fifty-eight, acquired his first body decoration.
When Earl strode through the front entrance of the exclusive Pendleton, into the lobby, the night concierge, Norman Fixxer, greeted him by name. Norman sat on a stool behind the reception counter to the left, a book open in front of him, looking like a ventriloquist’s dummy: eyes wide and blue and glassy, pronounced marionette lines like scars in his face, head cocked at an odd angle. In a tailored black suit and a crisp white shirt and a black bow tie, with a fussily arranged white pocket handkerchief blossoming from the breast pocket of his coat, Norman was overdressed by the standards of the two other concierges who worked the earlier shifts.
Earl Blandon didn’t like Norman. He didn’t trust him. The concierge tried too hard. He was excessively polite. Earl didn’t trust polite people who tried too hard. They always proved to be hiding something. Sometimes they hid the fact that they were FBI agents, pretending instead to be lobbyists with a suitcase full of cash and a deep respect for the power of a senator. Earl didn’t suspect that Norman Fixxer was an FBI agent in disguise, but the concierge was for damn sure something more than what he pretended to be.
Earl acknowledged Norman’s greeting with only a scowl. He wanted to raise his newly lettered middle finger, but he restrained himself. Offending a concierge was a bad idea. Your mail might go missing. The suit you expected back from the dry cleaner by Wednesday evening might be delivered