"Okay, I was just getting to that. Over here through this arch."
They walked into a long, rectangular room that seemed to stretch for miles. Watson pulled a cord and a single seventyfive-watt bulb cast a sickish, swinging glow over the area they were standing in. Straight ahead was the bottom of the elevator shaft, heavy greased cables descending to pulleys twenty feet in diameter and a huge, grease-clogged motor. Newspapers were everywhere, bundled and banded and boxed. Other cartons were marked Records or Invoices or ReceiptsSAV$1 The smell was yellow and moldy. Some of the cartons were falling apart, spilling yellow flimsy sheets that might have been twenty years old out onto the floor. Jack stared around, fascinated. The Overlook's entire history might be here, buried in these rotting cartons.
"That elevator's a bitch to keep runnin," Watson said, jerking his thumb at it. "I know Ullman's buying the state elevator inspector a few fancy dinners to keep the repairman away from that f**ker.
"Now, here's your central plumbin core." In front of them five large pipes, each of them wrapped in insulation and cinched with steel bands, rose into the shadows and out of sight.
Watson pointed to a cobwebby shelf beside the utility shaft. There were a number of greasy rags on it, and a looseleaf binder. "That there is all your plumbin schematics," he said. "I don't think you'll have any trouble with leaks-never has been-but sometimes the pipes freeze up. Only way to stop that is to run the faucets a little bit durin the nights, but there's over four hundred taps in this f**kin palace. That fat fairy upstairs would scream all the way to Denver when he saw the water bill. Ain't that right?"
"I'd say that's a remarkably astute analysis."
Watson looked at him admiringly. "Say, you really are a college fella aren't you? Talk just like a book. I admire that, as long as the fella ain't one of those fairy-boys. Lots of em are. You know who stirred up all those college riots a few years ago? The hommasexshuls, that's who. They get frustrated an have to cut loose. Comin out of the closet, they call it. Holy shit, I don't know what the world's comin to.
"Now, if she freezes, she most likely gonna freeze right up in this shaft. No heat, you see. If it happens, use this." He reached into a broken orange crate and produced a small gas torch.
"You just unstrap the insulation when you find the ice plug and put the heat right to her. Get it?"
"Yes. But what if a pipe freezes outside the utility core?"
"That won't happen if you're doin your job and keepin the place heated. You can't get to the other pipes anyway. Don't you fret about it. You'll have no trouble. Beastly place down here. Cobwebby. Gives me the horrors, it does."
"Ullman said the first winter caretaker killed his family and himself."
"Yeah, that guy Grady. He was a bad actor, I knew that the minute I saw him. Always grinnin like an egg-suck dog. That was when they were just startin out here and that fat f**k Ullman, he woulda hired the Boston Strangler if he'd've worked for minimum wage. Was a ranger from the National Park that found em; the phone was out. All of em up in the west wing on the third floor, froze solid. Too bad about the little girls. Eight and six, they was. Cute as cut-buttons. Oh, that was a hell of a mess. That Ullman, he manages some honky-tonky resort place down in Florida in the off-season, and he caught a plane up to Denver and hired a sleigh to take him up here from Sidewinder because the roads were closed-a sleigh, can you believe that? He about split a gut tryin to keep it out of the papers. Did pretty well, I got to give him that. There was an item in the Denver Post, and of course the bituary in that pissant little rag they have down in Estes Park, but that was just about all. Pretty good, considerin the reputation this place has got. I expected some reporter would dig it all up again and just sorta put Grady in it as an excuse to rake over the scandals."