AT FIRST JUST GHOSTLY 1. Beginning Our Descent His name was Cody Lennox, and he was coming back to England to die, or maybe just to forget, and after all it's about the same in the long run. He had been dozing for the last hour or so, when the British Airways stewardess politely offered him an immigration card to be filled in. He placed it upon the tray table beside the unfinished game of solitaire and the finished glass of Scotch, which he must now remember to call whisky when asking at the bar, and this was one of the few things he was unlikely to forget. Lennox tapped his glass. "Time for another?" "Certainly, sir." The stewardess was blonde and compactly pretty and carefully spoke BBC English with only a trace of a Lancashire accent. Her training had also taught her not to look askance at first class passengers who declined breakfast in favor of another large whisky. Lennox's fellow passenger in the aisle seat favored him with a bifocaled frown and returned to his book of crossword puzzles. Lennox had fantasied him to be an accountant for some particularly corrupt television evangelist, doubtlessly on an urgent mission to Switzerland. They had not spoken since the first hour of the flight, when after preflight champagne and three subsequent large whiskies Lennox had admitted to being a writer. Fellow passenger (scathingly): "Oh, well then - name something you've written." Lennox (in apparent good humor): "You go first. Name something you've read." In the ensuing frostiness Lennox played countless hands of solitaire with the deck the stewardess had provided and downed almost as many large whiskies, which she also dutifully provided. He considered a visit to the overhead lounge, but a trip to the lavatory convinced him that his legs weren't to be trusted on the stairs. So he played solitaire, patiently, undeterred by total lack of success, losing despite the nagging temptation to cheat. Lennox had once been told by a friend in a moment of drunken insight that a Total Loser was someone who cheated at solitaire and still lost, and Lennox didn't care to take that chance. Eventually he fell asleep. Cody Lennox liked to fly first class. He stood a rangy six-foot-four, and while he still combed his hair to look like James Dean, his joints were the other side of forty and rebelled at being folded into a 747's tourist-class orange crate. He was wont to say that the edible food and free booze were more than worth the additional expense on a seven-hour flight, and his preventive remedy for tedium and for jet-lag was to drink himself into a blissful stupor and sleep throughout the flight. Once he and Cathy had flown over on the Concorde, and for that cherished memory he would never do so again. He still hadn't got used to traveling alone, and he supposed he never would. He looked through the window and into darkness fading to grey. As they chased the dawn, clouds began to appear and break apart; below them monotonous expanses of grey sea gave way to glimpses of distant green land. Coming in over Ireland, he supposed, and finished his drink. He felt steadier now, and he filled out the immigration card, wincing, as he knew he would, over the inquiry as to marital status, etc. He placed the card inside his passport, avoiding looking at his photograph there. There was time for another hand, so he collected and reshuffled his cards. "We are beginning our descent into London Heathrow," someone was announcing. Lennox had nodded off. "Please make certain your seatbelts are fastened, your seat backs are in the upright position, your tray tables are.. ." "The passengers will please refrain," prompted Lennox, scooping up the cards and locking back his tray. "Batten the hatches, you swabs. Prepare to abandon ship." "Do you want to know why you never won?" "Eh?" said Lennox, startled by his seatmate's first attempt at conversation since the Jersey shore. The mysterious accountant pointed an incisive finger toward the cabin floor. "You haven't been playing with a full deck." The Queen of Spades peeked out from beneath the accountant's tight black shoes. 'The opportunity to deliver a line such as that comes only once in a lifetime," Lennox said with admiration. He reached down to recover the truant card, but the impact of landing skidded it away. Probably the really and truly best thing about flying first class across the Atlantic was that you were first off the plane and first to get through immigration and customs. Lennox had a morbid dread of being engulfed by gabbling hordes of blue-haired widows from New Jersey or milling throngs of students hunchedbacked by garish knapsacks and sleeping bags. "Americans never queue up," he once observed to an icily patient gentleman, similarly overrun while waiting for a teller at a London bank. "They just mill about and make confused sounds." "The purpose of your stay here, sir?" asked the immigrations officer, flipping through Lennox's passport. "Primarily I'm on holiday," said Lennox. "Although for tax purposes I'll be mixing in a little business, as I'm also here to attend the World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton some days from now." The officer was automatically stamping his passport. "So then, you're a writer, are you, sir?" His eyes abruptly focused through the boredom of routine, and he flipped back to the passport photo. "Cody Lennox?" He compared photo and face in disbelief. "Lord, and I've just finished reading They Do Not Die!" "Small world," said Cody imaginatively. "Will you still let me in?" "First celebrity I've had here." The immigrations officer returned his passport. "Your books have given me and the wife some fair shivers. Working on a new one, are you?" "Might write one while I'm here." "I'll want to read it, then." Lennox passed through to baggage claim and found his two scruffy suitcases. They were half-empty, as he preferred to buy whatever he needed when he needed it, and he hated to pack. He also hated carry-on luggage, people who carried on carry-on luggage, and cameras of all sorts. Such eccentricities frequently excited some speculation as to his nationality. Cody Lennox was, however, American: born in Los Angeles of a Scandinavian bit-player and a father who worked in pictures before skipping to Mexico; educated across the States with two never-to-be-completed doctorates scattered along the way, and now living in New York City. He had had eight best-selling horror novels over the last five years, in addition to some other books that had paid the bills early on. His novels weren't all that long on the best-seller lists-, but they were there, nonetheless, and film rights and script work all added up to an enviable bundle. He had been on Johnny Carson twice, but he had never hosted Saturday Night Live. His books could be found at super-market check-out counters between the tabloids and the TV Guides, but only for a month or so. It was a living. Once he had been happy with his life. Cody Lennox hauled his pair of cases through the green lane at Heathrow customs. He had made this trip a dozen times or more, and he had never been stopped. Sometimes he considered becoming a smuggler. Probably he looked too non-innocent tog the customs officers to bother examining his luggage. He looked a little like an on-the-skids rock star with his designer jeans and T-shirt and wrinkled linen jacket. He still had the face of a young James Dean, but his ash-blond hair was so pale as to seem dead-white His left ear was pierced, but he seldom bothered to wear anything there, and his week-old smear of a beard was fashionable but too light to be noticed. He wore blue-tensed glasses over Ins pale blue eyes, but this was more of necessity than style: Lennox was virtually blinded by bright sunlight. Lennox adjusted his scarred watch to London time while he waited to cash a traveler's check at the bank outside the customers exit. He saw no sign of his seatmate, and for this he was grateful. Bastard might have told him about the missing card. The Piccadilly Line ran from Heathrow to where Lennox meant to go, but he was in no mood for the early morning crush on the tube. Still feeling the buzz of a long flight and too many drinks, he joined the queue for a taxi-nudging his cases along with his foot, as he endured contused American tourists and aggressive Germans who simply shoved to the front of it all. Lennox was very tired and somewhere on the verge of a hangover, when the next black Austin stopped for him. He tossed his cases into the missing left-side front seat and pulled himself into the back. After the 747 the back seat was spacious, and he stretched out his long legs. He said, "The Bloomsbury Park Hotel. Small place on Southampton Row. Just off Russell Square." "I know it, Gov," said the driver. "Changed the name again, have they?" "Right. Used to be the Grand. God only knows what it was before that." II. Lost Without a Crowd It was not much after nine when the cab made a neat U-turn across Southampton Row and landed Lennox and his cases at the door of his hotel. In addition to changing its name, the Bloomsbury Park Hotel had changed management half a dozen times in the dozen or so years that Lennox had been stopping there, but the head porter had been there probably since before the Blitz, and he greeted Lennox with a warm smile. "Good to see you again, sir." "Good to be back, Mr. Edwards." It had been about a year since his last stay here, and Edwards remembered not to inquire about his wife. The newest management had redone the foyer again; this time in trendy...
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