Joshua Crawford decided to have a cup of coffee in the beanery across the street from the Conning Towers. The coffee was not at all good and he almost left after the first sip. But for some reason he stayed, sipping at it from time to time and smoking constantly, his eyes flashing from the glowing end of his cigarette to the impressive entrance of the Conning Towers.
If he had not lingered over the coffee, he would not have been there to see Richie Parsons emerge alone from the hotel about a half-hour after entering it. When he did, a jolt of excitement went through him and he dropped a dime on the counter and left the diner in a hurry. He waited until Richie was half a block ahead and then began to follow him.
This time Richie didn’t stay on State Street. This time he walked into just the sort of neighborhood Crawford would have selected — a warehouse district, empty of people and homes and apartment buildings. An ideal setting for a quick and quiet murder.
Crawford began walking faster. Without breaking stride he opened the briefcase, got the gun in his right hand and closed the briefcase again. He kept walking faster and in no time at all he was just a few feet behind Richie.
The gun was already pointed at Richie when he turned around. He stared and his eyes took in first Crawford and then the gun, and then both Crawford and the gun at once. For the shadow of an instant he stared and his face was a study.
Then there was a hole in it.
Eight
There was a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and Honour Mercy, emerging from her shower, toweled the steam from the surface of the mirror and looked at herself, trying to find comfort in the appearance of her body.
But there was no comfort there, there or anywhere else. “He’s going to leave me,” she told the girl in the mirror. “He doesn’t need me anymore, and he’s going to leave me.”
She wondered if Richie himself knew yet that he would be leaving her soon, and she thought that he was probably beginning to suspect it. The difference in his attitude, the way he had sung in the shower, the fact that he was now out of the hotel somewhere; they all gave indication of the change in Richie Parsons that was making her unnecessary to him.
A month ago, Richie wouldn’t have dared set foot it Albany. Once in Albany, he wouldn’t have dreamed of registering at the city’s most expensive hotel. Having rented a hotel room, no power on earth would have moved him from that hotel room, to roam the streets of his home town late at night.
She understood some of the causes of the change. She was a major cause. When he had been at his most bewildered, his most frightened, she had given him refuge and friendship. More than that, she had given him an appreciative sexual partner, without which he would never have emerged from his cringing, cowering shell. She had built up his ego, supported him, comforted him, protected him, and his personality had developed character.
There were other factors, too. The longer he had successfully avoided capture by the authorities, the less the authorities were a menace in his mind. And with that threat waning, he gradually had less reason to cover, less reason to be afraid.
The decision to come to Albany was the final step in the change. He had made no decisions at all since he had run away from the Air Force; Honour Mercy had made all the decisions for both of them. Now, at last, he had made a decision of his own. And his decision had been to brave his terror where it would be the fiercest. In his own home town.
As she thought about it, it occurred to her that there was a step missing in the chain. Richie was a different person today — had been a different person when she met him at Grand Central — from the Richie of yesterday. Something had happened that had forced him to make the decision; and then he had made the decision, and the change had been complete. But what had forced the decision?
The man who had asked him for his draft card? She considered that, and rejected it. No, it would have had to be more than that. An incident like that would simply have sent Richie running for shelter to their apartment, and he wouldn’t have ventured out on the street again for days. There had been something else; something more than what he had told her.
For the first time, Richie had kept something from her, had lied to her. And that knowledge only confirmed the idea that Richie was going to leave her.
She dried herself hurriedly, taking no enjoyment from it. Usually, she luxuriated in the shower, and in the drying after that, with a huge soft towel like this, rubbing her skin until it tingled and shone. Tonight, she couldn’t think about such things. She patted herself dry as quickly as possible and went out to the other room to look at the clock-radio on the nightstand.
Richie had said he was going to be out for an hour at the most. He had gone out for a walk a little before ten — proving to himself his new independence and fearlessness — and then he had gone out at eleven o’clock exactly. This time, to talk to the man he knew who might be able to arrange false identification for him. And he had promised he would be back within the hour; he would be back by midnight for sure.
The clock-radio said that it was now quarter to one.
“He isn’t coming back,” she said. She said it aloud, without realizing she was going to, and then she listened to the echo of the words, and wondered if she’d been right.
Would he do it this way? He couldn’t, that would be too cruel, too unfair. To leave her stranded here, in a city she didn’t know, in this expensive hotel room, with no money, with nothing — that would be too terribly cruel.
But it would be the easiest way out, for him, and Honour Mercy knew her Richie well. Richie would always take the easiest way out.
If he isn’t home by one o’clock, she told herself, I’ll know he’s left me.
Fifteen minutes later, she said to herself: If he isn’t home by one-thirty, I’ll know for sure that he’s left me.
When the big hand was on the six and the little hand was on the one, she started to cry.
When the big hand was on the eight and the little hand had edged over toward the two, she finished crying.
By the time the big hand had reached the nine and the little hand hadn’t done much of anything, she was dressed and lipsticked, and ready to go.
Honour Mercy Bane was a pragmatist. “Go to Newport and be a bad woman,” her parents told her, and she went. “We’ve got to pack up and get out of Newport,” Richie said, and she packed. “Talk to me,” said Joshua Crawford, and she talked.
And now, now she was alone and penniless in a strange city, with a huge hotel bill that would be hers alone to pay, and once again she was a pragmatist. It was quarter to two in the morning, and time for Honour Mercy to go to work.
Honour Mercy had learned a lot, changed a lot, grown a lot since Newport, too. Six months ago, in this situation, she would have been at a loss. She would have tried to hustle on one of the wrong streets and spent the night in jail. Now, she knew better. She left the room, pressed the button for the elevator, and said to the operator on the way down, “Where can a girl find some work in this town, do you know?” Because elevator operators in hotels always did know.
He looked at her blankly, either not yet understanding or playing dumb for reasons of his own. “Lots of Civil Service jobs with the state around here,” he said.
“That isn’t exactly what I was thinking.”
He studied her, and chewed his cud, and finally made up his mind. “Management don’t allow hustling in the hotel,” he said.
“Don’t tell me where I can’t,” she told him. “Tell me where I can.”