The Shining Part 15

Horace M. Derwent Requests The Pleasure of Your Company At a Masked Ball to Celebrate The Grand Opening of THE OVERLOOK HOTEL Dinner Will Be Served At 8 P.M.

Unmasking And Dancing At Midnight August 29, 1945 RSVP Dinner at eight! Unmasking at midnight!

He could almost see them in the dining room, the richest men in America and their women. Tuxedos and glimmering starched s.h.i.+rts; evening gowns; the band playing; gleaming high-heeled pumps. The clink of gla.s.ses, the jocund pop of champagne corks. The war was over, or almost over. The future lay ahead, clean and s.h.i.+ning. America was the colossus of the world and at last she knew it and accepted it.

And later, at midnight, Derwent himself crying: "Unmask! Unmask!" The masks coming off and...

(The Red Death held sway over all!) He frowned. What left field had that come out of? That was Poe, the Great American Hack. And surely the Overlook-this s.h.i.+ning, glowing Overlook on the invitation he held in his hands-was the farthest cry from E. A. Poe imaginable.

He put the invitation back and turned to the next page. A paste-up from one of the Denver papers, and scratched beneath it the date: May 15, 1947.

POSH MOUNTAIN RESORT REOPENS WITH STELLAR GUEST REGISTER Derwent Says Overlook Will Be "Showplace of the World"

By David Felton, Features Editor The Overlook Hotel has been opened and reopened in its thirty-eight-year history, but rarely with such style and dash as that promised by Horace Derwent, the mysterious California millionaire who is the latest owner of the hostelry.

Derwent, who makes no secret of having sunk more than one million dollars into his newest venture-and some say the figure is closer to three million-says that "The new Overlook will be one of the world's showplaces, the kind of hotel you will remember overnigbting in thirty years later." When Derwent, who is rumored to have substantial Las Vegas holdings, was asked if his purchase and refurbis.h.i.+ng of the Overlook signaled the opening gun in a battle to legalize casino-style gambling in Colorado, the aircraft, movie, munitions, and s.h.i.+pping magnate denied it... with a smile. "The Overlook would be cheapened by gambling," he said, "and don't think I'm knocking Vegas! They've got too many of my markers out there for me to do that! I have no interest in lobbying for legalized gambling in Colorado. It would be spitting into the wind." When the Overlook opens officially (there was a gigantic and hugely successful party there some time ago when the actual work was finished), the newly painted, papered, and decorated rooms will be occupied by a stellar guest list, ranging from Chic designer Corbat Stani to...

Smiling bemusedly, Jack turned the page. Now he was looking at a full-page ad from the New York Sunday Times travel section. On the page after that a story on Derwent himself, a balding man with eyes that pierced you even from an old newsprint photo. He was wearing rimless spectacles and a forties-style pencil- line mustache that did nothing at all to make him look like Errol Flynn. His face was that of an accountant. It was the eyes that made him look like someone or something else.

Jack skimmed the article rapidly. He knew most of the information from a Newsweek story on Derwent the year before. Born poor in St. Paul, never finished high school, joined the Navy instead. Rose rapidly, then left in a bitter wrangle over the patent on a new type of propeller that he had designed. In the tug of war between the Navy and an unknown young man named Horace Derwent, Uncle Sam came off the predictable winner. But Uncle Sam had never gotten another patent, and there had been a lot of them.

In the late twenties and early thirties, Derwent turned to aviation. He bought out a bankrupt cropdusting company, turned it into an airmail service, and prospered. More patents followed: a new monoplane wing design, a bomb carriage used on the Flying Fortresses that had rained fire on Hamburg and Dresden and Berlin, a machine gun that was cooled by alcohol, a prototype of the ejection seat later used in United States jets.

And along the line, the accountant who lived in the same skin as the inventor kept piling up the investments. A piddling string of munition factories in New York and New Jersey. Five textile mills in New England. Chemical factories in the bankrupt and groaning South. At the end of the Depression his wealth had been nothing but a handful of controlling interests, bought at abysmally low prices, salable only at lower prices still. At one point Derwent boasted that he could liquidate completely and realize the price of a three year-old Chevrolet.

There had been rumors, Jack recalled, that some of the means employed by Derwent to keep his head above water were less than savory. Involvement with bootlegging. Prost.i.tution in the Midwest. Smuggling in the coastal areas of the South where his fertilizer factories were. Finally an a.s.sociation with the nascent western gambling interests.

Probably Derwent's most famous investment was the purchase of the foundering Top Mark Studios, which had not had a bit since their child star, Little Margery Morris, had died of a heroin overdose in 1934. She was fourteen. Little Margery, who had specialized in sweet seven-year-olds who saved marriages and the lives of dogs unjustly accused of killing chickens, had been given the biggest Hollywood funeral in history by Top Mark-the official story was that Little Margery had contracted a "wasting disease" while entertaining at a New York orphanage-and some cynics suggested the studio had laid out all that long green because it knew it was burying itself.

Derwent hired a keen businessman and raging s.e.x maniac named Henry Finkel to run Top Mark, and in the two years before Pearl Harbor the studio ground out sixty movies, fifty-five of which glided right into the face of the Hayes Office and spit on its large blue nose. The other five were government training films.

The feature films were huge successes. During one of them an unnamed costume designer had juryrigged a strapless bra for the heroine to appear in during the Grand Ball scene, where she revealed everything except possibly the birthmark just below the cleft of her b.u.t.tocks. Derwent received credit for this invention as well, and his reputation-or notoriety-grew.

The war had made him rich and he was still rich. Living in Chicago, seldom seen except for Derwent Enterprises board meetings (which he ran with an iron hand), it was rumored that he owned United Air Lines, Las Vegas (where he was known to have controlling interests in four hotel-casinos and some involvement in at least six others), Los Angeles, and the U.S.A. itself. Reputed to be a friend of royalty, presidents, and underworld kingpins, it was supposed by many that he was the richest man in the world.

But he had not been able to make a go of the Overlook, Jack thought. He put the sc.r.a.pbook down for a moment and took the small notebook and mechanical pencil he always kept with him out of his breast pocket. He jotted "Look into H. Derwent, Sidwndr Ibry?" He put the notebook back and picked up the sc.r.a.pbook again. His face was preoccupied, his eyes distant. He wiped his mouth constantly with his hand as he turned the pages.

He skimmed the material that followed, making a mental note to read it more closely later. Press releases were pasted into many of the pages. So-and-so was expected at the Overlook next week, thus-and-such would be entertaining in the lounge (in Derwent's time it had been the Red-Eye Lounge). Many of the entertainers were Vegas names, and many of the guests were Top Mark executives and stars.

Then, in a clipping marked February 1, 1952: MILLIONAIRE EXEC TO SELL COLORADO INVESTMENTS Deal Made with California Investors on Overlook, Other Investments, Derwent Reveals By Rodney Conklin, Financial Editor In a terse communique yesterday from the Chicago offices of the monolithic Derwent Enterprises, it was revealed that millionaire (perhaps billionaire) Horace Derwent has sold out of Colorado in a stunning financial power play that will be completed by October 1, 1954. Derwent's investments include natural gas, coal, hydroelectric power, and a land development company called Colorado Suns.h.i.+ne, Inc., which owns or holds options on better than 500,000 acres of Colorado land.

The most famous Derwent holding in Colorado, the Overlook Hotel, has already been sold, Derwent revealed in a rare interview yesterday. The buyer was a California group of investors headed by Charles Grondin, a former director of the California Land Development Corporation. While Derwent refused to discuss price, informed sources...

He had sold out everything, lock, stock, and barrel. It wasn't just the Overlook. But somehow... somehow...

He wiped his lips with his hand and wished he had a drink. This would go better with a drink. He turned more pages.

The California group had opened the hotel for two seasons, and then sold it to a Colorado group called Mountainview Resorts. Mountainview went bankrupt in 1957 amid charges of corruption, nest-feathering, and cheating the stockholders. The president of the company shot himself two days after being subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.

The hotel had been closed for the rest of the decade. There was a single story about it, a Sunday feature headlined FORMER GRAND HOTEL SINKING INTO DECAY. The accompanying photos wrenched at Jack's heart: the paint on the front porch peeling, the lawn a bald and scabrous mess, windows broken by storms and stones.

This would be a part of the book, if he actually wrote it, too-the phoenix going down into the ashes to be reborn. He promised himself he would take care of the place, very good care. It seemed that before today he had never really understood the breadth of his responsibility to the Overlook. It was almost like having a responsibility to history.

In 1961 four writers, two of them Pulitzer Prize winners, had leased the Overlook and reopened it as a writers' school. That had lasted one year. One of the students had gotten drunk in his third-floor room, crashed out of the window somehow, and fell to his death on the cement terrace below. The paper hinted that it might have been suicide.

Any big hotel have got scandals, Watson had said, just like every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? h.e.l.l, people come and go...

Suddenly it seemed that he could almost feel the weight of the Overlook bearing down on him from above, one hundred and ten guest rooms, the storage rooms, kitchen, pantry, freezer, lounge, ballroom, dining room...

(In the room the women come and go) (... and the Red Death held sway over all.) He rubbed his lips and turned to the next page in the sc.r.a.pbook. He was in the last third of it now, and for the first time he wondered consciously whose book this was, left atop the highest pile of records in the cellar.

A new headline, this one dated April 10, 1963.

LAS VEGAS GROUP BUYS FAMED COLORADO HOTEL Scenic Overlook to Become Key Club Robert T. Leffing, spokesman for a group of investors going under the name of High Country Investments, announced today in Las Vegas that High Country has negotiated a deal for the famous Overlook Hotel, a resort located high in the Rockies. Leffing declined to mention the names of specific investors, but said the hotel would be turned into an exclusive "key club." He said that the group he represents hopes to sell members.h.i.+ps to high echelon executives in American and foreign companies.

High Country also owns hotels in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.

The Overlook became world-known in the years 1946 to 1952 when it was owned by elusive mega-millionaire Horace Derwent, who...

The item on the next page was a mere squib, dated four months later. The Overlook had opened under its new management. Apparently the paper hadn't been able to find out or wasn't interested in who the key holders were, because no name was mentioned but High Country Investments-the most anonymous-sounding company name Jack had ever heard except for a chain of bike and appliance shops in western New England that went under the name of Business, Inc.

He turned the page and blinked down at the clipping pasted there.

MILLIONAIRE DERWENT BACK IN COLORADO VIA BACK DOOR?.

High Country Exec Revealed to be Charles Grondin By Rodney Conklin, Financial Editor The Overlook Hotel, a scenic pleasure palace in the Colorado high country and once the private plaything of millionaire Horace Derwent, is at the center of a financial tangle which is only now beginning to come to light.

On April 10 of last year the hotel was purchased by a Las Vegas firm, High Country Investments, as a key club for wealthy executives of both foreign and domestic breeds. Now informed sources say that High Country is headed by Charles Grondin, 53, who was the head of California Land Development Corp. until 1959, when he resigned to take the position of executive veep in the Chicago home office of Derwent Enterprises.

This has led to speculation that High Country Investments may be controlled by Derwent, who may have acquired the Overlook for the second time, and under decidedly peculiar circ.u.mstances.

Grondin, who was indicted and acquitted on charges of tax evasion in 1960, could not be reached for comment, and Horace Derwent, who guards his own privacy jealously, had no comment when reached by telephone. State Representative d.i.c.k Bows of Golden has called for a complete investigation into...

That clipping was dated July 27, 1964. The next was a column from a Sunday paper that September. The byline belonged to Josh Brannigar, a muck-raking investigator of the Jack Anderson breed. Jack vaguely recalled that Brannigar had died in 1968 or '69.

MAFIA FREE-ZONE IN COLORADO?.

By Josh Brannigar It now seems possible that the newest r&r spot of Organization overlords in the U.S. is located at an out-of-the-way hotel nestled in the center of the Rockies. The Overlook Hotel, a white elephant that has been run lucklessly by almost a dozen different groups and individuals since it first opened its doors in 1910, is now being operated as a security-jacketed "key club," ostensibly for unwinding businessmen. The question is, what business are the Overlook's key holders really in?

The members present during the week of August 1623 may give us an idea.

The list below was obtained by a former employee of High Country Investments, a company first believed to be a dummy company owned by Derwent Enterprises. It now seems more likely that Derwent's interest in High Country (if any) is outweighed by those of several Las Vegas gambling barons. And these same gaming honchos have been linked in the past to both suspected and convicted underworld kingpins.

Present at the Overlook during that sunny week in August were: Charles Grondin, President of High Country Investments. When it became known in July of this year that he was running the High Country s.h.i.+p it was announced-considerably after the fact-that he had resigned his position in Derwent Enterprises previously. The silver-maned Grondin, who refused to talk to me for this column, has been tried once and acquitted on tax evasion charges (1960).

Charles "Baby Charlie" Battaglia, a 60-year-old Vegas empressario (controlling interests in The Greenback and The Lucky Bones on the Strip).

Battaglia is a close personal friend of Grondin. His arrest record stretches back to 1932, when he was tried and acquitted in the gangland-style murder of Jack "Dutchy" Morgan. Federal authorities suspect his involvement in the drug traffic, prost.i.tution, and murder for hire, but "Baby Charlie" has only been behind bars once, for income tax evasion in 1955-56.

Richard Scarne, the princ.i.p.al stockholder of Fun Time Automatic Machines.

Fun Time makes slot machines for the Nevada crowd, pinball machines, and jukeboxes (Melody-Coin) for the rest of the country. He has done time for a.s.sault with a deadly weapon (1940), carrying a concealed weapon (1948), and conspiracy to commit tax fraud (1961).

Peter Zeiss, a Miami-based importer, now nearing 70. For the last five years Zeiss has been fighting deportation as an undesirable person. He has been convicted on charges of receiving and concealing stolen property (1958), and conspiracy to commit tax fraud (1954). Charming, distinguished, and courtly, Pete Zeiss is called "Poppa" by his intimates and has been tried on charges of murder and accessory to murder. A large stockholder in Scarne's Fun Time company, he also has known interests in four Las Vegas casinos.

Vittorio Gienelli, also known as "Vito the Chopper," tried twice for gangland-style murders, one of them the ax-murder of Boston vice overlord Frank Scoffy. Gienelli has been indicted twenty-three times, tried fourteen times, and convicted only once, for shoplifting in 1940. It has been said that in recent years Gienelli has become a power in the organization's western operation, which is centered in Las Vegas.

Carl "Jimmy-Ricks" Prashkin, a San Francisco investor, reputed to be the heir apparent of the power Gienelli now wields. Prashkin owns large blocks of stock in Derwent Enterprises, High Country Investments, Fun Time Automatic Machines, and three Vegas casinos. Prashkin is clean in America, but was indicted in Mexico on fraud charges that were dropped quickly three weeks after they were brought. It has been suggested that Prashkin may be in charge of laundering money skimmed from Vegas casino operations and funneling the big bucks back into the organization's legitimate western operations. And such operations may now include the Overlook Hotel in Colorado.

Other visitors during the current season include...

There was more but Jack only skimmed it, constantly wiping his lips with his hand. A banker with Las Vegas connections. Men from New York who were apparently doing more in the Garment District than making clothes. Men reputed to be involved with drugs, vice, robbery, murder.

G.o.d, what a story! And they had all been here, right above him, in those empty rooms. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g expensive wh.o.r.es on the third floor, maybe. Drinking magnums of champagne. Making deals that would turn over millions of dollars, maybe in the very suite of rooms where Presidents had stayed. There was a story, all right.

One h.e.l.l of a story. A little frantically, he took out his notebook and jotted down another memo to check all of these people out at the library in Denver when the caretaking job was over. Every hotel has its ghost? The Overlook had a whole coven of them. First suicide, then the Mafia, what next?

The next clipping was an angry denial of Brannigar's charges by Charles Grondin. Jack smirked at it.

The clipping on the next page was so large that it had been folded. Jack unfolded it and gasped harshly. The picture there seemed to leap out at him: the wallpaper had been changed since June of 1966, but he knew that window and the view perfectly well. It was the western exposure of the Presidential Suite.

Murder came next. The sitting room wall by the door leading into the bedroom was splashed with blood and what could only be white flecks of brain matter. A blank-faced cop was standing over a corpse hidden by a blanket. Jack stared, fascinated, and then his eyes moved up to the headline.

GANGLAND-STYLE SHOOTING AT COLORADO HOTEL Reputed Crime Overlord Shot at Mountain Key Club Two Others Dead SIDEWINDER, COLO (UPI)-Forty miles from this sleepy Colorado town, a gangland-style execution has occurred in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

The Overlook Hotel, purchased three years ago as an exclusive key club by a Las Vegas firm, was the site of a triple shotgun slaying. Two of the men were either the companions or bodyguards of Vittorio Gienelli, also known as "The Chopper" for his reputed involvement in a Boston slaying twenty years ago.

Police were summoned by Robert Norman, manager of the Overlook, who said he heard shots and that some of the guests reported two men wearing stockings on their faces and carrying guns had fled down the fire escape and driven off in a late-model tan convertible.

State Trooper Benjamin Moorer discovered two dead men, later identified as Victor T. Boorman and Roger Maca.s.si, both of Las Vegas, outside the door of the Presidential Suite where two American Presidents have stayed.

Inside, Moorer found the body of Gienelli sprawled on the floor. Gienelli was apparently fleeing his attackers when he was cut down. Moorer said Gienelli had been shot with heavy-gauge shotguns at close range.

Charles Grondin, the representative of the company which now owns the Overlook, could not be reached for...

Below the clipping, in heavy strokes of a ball-point pen, someone had written: They took his b.a.l.l.s along with them.

Jack stared at that for a long time, feeling cold. Whose book was this?

He turned the page at last, swallowing a click in his throat. Another column from Josh Brannigar, this one dated early 1967. He only read the headline: NOTORIOUS HOTEL SOLD FOLLOWING MURDER OF UNDERWORLD FIGURE.

The sheets following that clipping were blank.

(They took his b.a.l.l.s along with them.) He flipped back to the beginning, looking for a name or address. Even a room number. Because he felt quite sure that whoever had kept this little book of memories had stayed at the hotel. But there was nothing.

He was getting ready to go through all the clippings, more closely this time, when a voice called down the stairs: "Jack? Hon?" Wendy.

He started, almost guiltily, as if he had been drinking secretly and she would smell the fumes on him. Ridiculous. He scrubbed his lips with his hand and called back, "Yeah, babe. Lookin for rats." She was coming down. He heard her on the stairs, then crossing the boiler room. Quickly, without thinking why he might be doing it, be stuffed the sc.r.a.pbook under a pile of bills and invoices. He stood up as she came through the arch.

"What in the world have you been doing down here? It's almost three o'clock!" He smiled. "Is it that late? I got rooting around through all this stuff.

Trying to find out where the bodies are buried, I guess." The words clanged back viciously in his mind.

She came closer, looking at him, and he unconsciously retreated a step, unable to help himself. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to smell liquor on him. Probably she wasn't even aware of it herself, but he was, and it made him feel both guilty and angry.

"Your mouth is bleeding," she said in a curiously flat tone.

"Huh?" He put his hand to his lips and winced at the thin stinging. His index finger came away b.l.o.o.d.y. His guilt increased.

"You've been rubbing your mouth again," she said.

He looked down and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess I have."

"It's been h.e.l.l for you, hasn't it?"

"No, not so bad."

"Has it gotten any easier?" He looked up at her and made his feet start moving. Once they were actually in motion it was easier. He crossed to his wife and slipped an arm around her waist. He brushed aside a sheaf of her blond hair and kissed her neck. "Yes," he said. "Where's Danny?"

"Oh, he's around somewhere. It's started to cloud up outside. Hungry?" He slipped a hand over her taut, jeans-clad bottom with counterfeit lechery.

"Like ze bear, madame."

"Watch out, slugger. Don't start something you can't finish."

"Fig-fig, madame?" he asked, still rubbing. "Dirty peeotures? Unnatural positions?" As they went through the arch, he threw one glance back at the box where the sc.r.a.pbook (whose?) was hidden. With the light out it was only a shadow. He was relieved that he had gotten Wendy away. His l.u.s.t became less acted, more natural, as they approached the stairs.

"Maybe," she said. "After we get you a sandwich-yeek!" She twisted away from him, giggling. "That tickles!"

"It teekles nozzing like Jock Torrance would like to teekle you, madame."

"Lay off, Jock. How about a ham and cheese... for the first course?" They went up the stairs together, and Jack didn't look over his shoulder again. But he thought of Watson's words: Every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? h.e.l.l, people come and go...

Then Wendy shut the bas.e.m.e.nt door behind them, closing it into darkness.

19 - Outside 217

Danny was remembering the words of someone else who had worked at the Overlook during the season: Her saying she'd seen something in one of the rooms where... a bad thing happened. That was in Room 217 and I want you to promise me you won't go in there, Danny... steer right clear...

It was a perfectly ordinary door, no different from any other door on the first two floors of the hotel. It was dark gray, halfway down a corridor that ran at right angles to the main second-floor hallway. The numbers on the door looked no different from the house numbers on the Boulder apartment building they had lived in. A 2, a 1, and a 7. Big deal. Just below them was a tiny gla.s.s circle, a peephole. Danny had tried several of them. From the inside you got a wide, fish-eye view of the corridor. From outside you could screw up your eye seven ways to Sunday and still not see a thing. A dirty gyp: (Why are you here?) After the walk behind the Overlook, he and Mommy had come back and she had fixed him his favorite lunch, a cheese and bologna sandwich plus Campbell's Bean Soup. They ate in d.i.c.k's kitchen and talked. The radio was on, getting thin and crackly music from the Estes Park station. The kitchen was his favorite place in the hotel, and he guessed that Mommy and Daddy must feel the same way, because after trying their meals in the dining room for three days or so, they had begun eating in the kitchen by mutual consent, setting up chairs around d.i.c.k Hallorann's butcher block, which was almost as big as their dining room table back in Stovington, anyway. The dining room had been too depressing, even with the lights on and the music playing from the tape ca.s.sette system in the office.

You were still just one of three people sitting at a table surrounded by dozens of other tables, all empty, all covered with those transparent plastic dustcloths. Mommy said it was like having dinner in the middle of a Horace Walpole novel, and Daddy had laughed and agreed. Danny had no idea who Horace Walpole was, but he did know that Mommy's cooking had begun to taste better as soon as they began to eat it in the kitchen. He kept discovering little flashes of d.i.c.k Hallorann's personality lying around, and they rea.s.sured him like a warm touch.

Mommy had eaten half a sandwich, no soup. She said Daddy must have gone out for a walk of his own since both the VW and the hotel truck were in the parking lot. She said she was tired and might lie down for an hour or so, if he thought he could amuse himself and not get into trouble. Danny told her around a mouthful of cheese and bologna that he thought he could.