The Shining

as a coot, you know, and he’d be pinchin the waitresses and grinnin at em when she wasn’t lookin. Hell, we even had bets on how long he’d last.”
Watson shrugged.
“Then he comes down one night around ten, sayin his ‘wife’ is ‘indisposed’- which meant she was passed out again like every other night they was there-and he’s goin to get her some stomach medicine. So off he goes in the little Porsche they come in, and that’s the last we see of him. Next morning she comes down and tries to put on this big act, but all day she’s gettin paler an paler, and Mr. Ullman asks her, sorta diplomatic-like, would she like him to notify the state cops, just in case maybe he had a little accident or something. She’s on him like a cat. No-no-no, he’s a fine driver, she isn’t worried, everything’s under control, he’ll be back for dinner. So that afternoon she steps into the Colorado around three and never has no dinner at all. She goes up to her room around tenthirty, and that’s the last time anybody saw her alive.”
“What happened?”
“County coroner said she took about thirty sleepin pills on top of all the booze. Her husband showed up the next day, some big-shot lawyer from New York. He gave old Ullman four different shades of holy hell. I’ll sue this an I’ll sue that an when I’m through you won’t even be able to find a clean pair of underwear, stuff like that. But Ullman’s good, the sucker. Ullman got him quieted down. Probably asked that bigshot how he’d like to see his wife splashed all over the New York papers: Wife of Prominent New York Blah Blah Found Dead With Bellyful of Sleeping Pills. After playing hide-the-salami with a kid young enough to be her grandson.
“The state cops found the Porsche in the back of this allnight burger joint down in Lyons, and Ullman pulled a few strings to get it released to that lawyer. Then both of them ganged up on old Archer Houghton, which is the county coroner, and got him to change the verdict to accidental death. Heart attack. Now ole Archer’s driving a Chrysler. I don’t begrudge him. A man’s got to take it where he finds it, especially when he starts gettin along in years.”
Out came the bandanna. Honk. Peek. Out of sight.
“So what happens? About a week later this stupid cunt of a chambermaid, Delores Vickery by name, she gives out with a helluva shriek while she’s makin up the room where those two stayed, and she faints dead away. When she comes to she says she seen the dead woman in the bathroom, layin naked in the tub. ‘Her face was all purple an puffy. ‘ she says, ‘an she was grinnin at me. ‘ So Ullman gave her two weeks’ worth of walking papers and told her to get lost. I figure there’s maybe forty-fifty people died in this hotel since my grandfather opened it for business in 1910.”
He looked shrewdly at Jack.
“You know how most of em go? Heart attack or stroke, while they’re bangin the lady they’re with. That’s what these resorts get a lot of, old types that want one last fling. They come up here to the mountains to pretend they’re twenty again. Sometimes somethin gives, and not all the guys who ran this place was as good as Ullman is at keepin it out of the papers. So the Overlook’s got a reputation, yeah. I’ll bet the fuckin Biltmore in New York City has got a reputation, if you ask the right people.”
“But no ghosts?”
“Mr. Torrance, I’ve worked here all my life. I played here when I was a kid no older’n your boy in that wallet snapshot you showed me. I never seen a ghost yet. You want to come out back with me, I’ll show you the equipment shed.”
“Fine.”
As Watson reached up to turn off the light, Jack said, “There sure are a lot of papers down here.”
“Oh, you’re not kiddin. Seems like they go back a thousand years. Newspapers and old invoices and bills of lading and Christ knows what else. My dad used to keep up with them pretty good when we had the old wood-burning furnace, but now they’ve got all out of hand. Some year I got to get a boy to haul them down to Sidewinder and burn em. If Ullman will stand the expense. I guess he will if I holler `rat’ loud enough.”
“Then there are rats?”
“Yeah, I guess there’s some. I got the traps and the poison Mr. Ullman wants you to use up in the attic and down here. You keep a good eye on your boy, Mr. Torrance. You wouldn’t want nothing to happen to him.”
“No, I sure wouldn’t.” Coming from Watson the advice didn’t sting.
They went to the stairs and paused there for a moment while Watson blew his nose again.
“You’ll find all the tools you need out there and some you don’t, I guess. And there’s the shingles. Did Ullman tell you about that?”
“Yes, he wants part of the west roof reshingled.”
“Hell get all the for-free out of you that he can, the fat little prick, and then whine around in the spring about how you didn’t do the job