“Hey!” Donner said. “How you doing?”
“Fine,” Kling said. “How about yourself?”
“Comme ci, comme ça,” Donner said, and made a seesawing motion with one fleshy hand.
“I’m looking for some stolen heaps,” Kling said, getting directly to the point.”
“What kind?” Donner said.
“Volkswagens. A ‘64 and a ‘66.”
“What color are they?”
“Red.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
“Where were they heisted?”
“One from in front of 861 West Meridian. The other from a parking lot on South Fourteenth.”
“When was this?”
“Both last week sometime. I don’t have the exact dates.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who stole them.”
“You think it’s the same guy on both?”
“I doubt it.”
“What’s so important about these heaps?”
“One of them may have been used in a bombing tonight.”
“You mean the church over on Culver?”
“That’s right.”
“Count me out,” Donner said.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a lot of guys in this town who’re in sympathy with what happened over there tonight. I don’t want to get involved in none of this black-white shit.”
“Who’s going to know whether you’re involved or not?” Kling asked.
“The same way you get information, they get information.”
“I need your help, Donner.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry on this one,” Donner said, and shook his head.
“In that case, I’d better hurry downtown to High Street.”
“Why? You got another source down there?”
“No, that’s where the DA’s office is.”
Both men stared at each other, Donner in a white towel draped around his belly, sweat still pouring from his face and his chest even though he was no longer in the steam room, Kling looking like a slightly tired advertising executive rather than a cop threatening a man with revelation of past deeds not entirely legal. They stared at each other with total understanding, caught in the curious symbiosis of law breaker and law enforcer, an empathy created by neither man, but essential to the existence of both. It was Donner who broke the silence.
“I don’t like being coerced,” he said.
“I don’t like being refused,” Kling answered.
“When do you need this?”
“I want to get going on it before morning.”
“You expect miracles, don’t you?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Miracles cost.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five if I turn up one heap, fifty if I turn up both.”
“Turn them up first. We’ll talk later.”
“And if somebody breaks my head later?”
“You should have thought of that before you entered the profession,” Kling said. “Come on, Donner, cut it out. This is a routine bombing by a couple of punks. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”
“No?” Donner asked. And then, in a very professorial voice, he uttered perhaps the biggest understatement of the decade. “Racial tensions are running very high in this city right now.”
“Have you got my number at the squadroom?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Donner said glumly.
“I’m going back there now. Let me hear from you soon.”
“You mind if I get dressed first?” Donner asked.
The night clerk at The Addison Hotel was alone in the lobby when Carella and Hawes walked in. Immersed in an open book on the desk in front of him, he did not look up as they approached. The lobby was furnished in faded Gothic: a threadbare oriental rug, heavy curlicued mahogany tables, ponderous stuffed chairs with sagging bottoms and soiled antimacassars, two spittoons resting alongside each of two mahogany-paneled supporting columns. A real Tiffany lampshade hung over the registration desk, one leaded glass panel gone, another badly cracked. In the old days, The Addison had been a luxury hotel. It now wore its past splendor with all the style of a two-dollar hooker in a moth-eaten mink she’d picked up in a thrift shop.
The clerk, in contrast to his ancient surroundings, was a young man in his mid-twenties, wearing a neatly pressed brown tweed suit, a tan shirt, a gold-and-brown silk rep tie, and eyeglasses with tortoiseshell rims. He glanced up at the detectives belatedly, squinting after the intense concentration of peering at print, and then he got to his feet.
“Yes, gentlemen,” he said. “May I help you?”
“Police officers,” Carella said. He took his wallet from his pocket and opened it to where his detective’s shield was pinned to a leather flap.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m Detective Carella, this is my partner, Detective Hawes.”
“How do you do? I’m the night clerk, my name is Ronnie Sanford.”
“We’re looking for someone who may have been registered here two weeks ago,” Hawes said.
“Well, if he was registered here two weeks ago,” Sanford said, “chances are he’s still registered. Most of our guests are residents.”
“Do you keep stationery in the lobby here?” Carella asked.
“Sir?”
“Stationery. Is there any place here in the lobby where someone could walk in off the street and pick up a piece of stationery?”
“No, sir. There’s a writing desk there in the corner, near the staircase, but we don’t stock it with stationery, no, sir.”
“Is there stationery in the rooms?”
“Yes, sir.” “How about here at the desk?”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
“Is there someone at this desk twenty-four hours a day?”
“Twenty-four hours a day, yes, sir. We have three shifts. Eight to four in the afternoon. Four to midnight. And midnight to eight A.M.”
“You came on at midnight, did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any guests come in after you started your shift?”
“A few, yes, sir.”
“Notice anybody with blood on his clothes?”
“Blood? Oh, no, sir.”
“Would you have noticed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you generally pretty aware of what’s going on around here?”
“I try to be, sir. At least, for most of the night. I catch a little nap when I’m not studying, but usually—”
“What do you study?”
“Accounting.”
“Where?”
“At Ramsey U.”
“Mind if we take a look at your register?”
“Not at all, sir.”
He walked to the mail rack and took the hotel register from the counter there. Returning to the desk, he opened it and said, “All of our present guests are residents, with the exception of Mr. Lambert in 204, and Mrs. Grant in 701.”
“When did they check in?”
“Mr. Lambert checked in... last night, I think it was. And Mrs. Grant has been here for four days. She’s leaving on Tuesday.”
“Are these the actual signatures of your guests?”
“Yes, sir. All guests are asked to sign the register, as required by state law.”
“Have you got that note, Cotton?” Carella asked, and then turned again to Sanford. “Would you mind if we took this over to the couch there?”
“Well, we’re not supposed—”
“We can give you a receipt for it, if you like.”
“No, I guess it’ll be all right.”
They carried the register to a couch upholstered in faded red velvet. With the book supported on Carella’s lap, they unfolded the note Mercy Howell had received and began comparing the signatures of the guests with the only part of the note that was not written in block letters, the words “The Avenging Angel.”