“You don’t like anybody’s looks, Unk. Except Stan Clark’s!” She reached up and pinched my cheek. “Let me handle the women’s work, will you?” she whispered. Then she slipped into gear and went rolling out front.
The guy’s routine was like grease on his squeaky-axle voice, and he shifted expressions like you flip switches. He was wearing that admiration look now. Teeth and eye-wrinkles. “Why the lip varnish?” he said. “You don’t paint orchids or shellac lilies!”
Mary Ellen parted her smeared lips the way Marilyn Monroe did. “I bet you tell that to all the counter girls!”
“You’re no counter girl,” he answered. “You’re some hotshot princess traveling incognito. You’re a sugar bowl Cinderella!”
Mary smiled uncertainly and offered him more coffee and he answered yes. He said something nice about the coffee and Mary gave him her stock line, “Tell all your friends and relatives!”
“I don’t have any friends and relatives,” the guy said.
“Now stop it! Everybody’s got relatives!” Mary teased.
“Nope. No relatives for me, kid-do. Just creditors...”
“That’s bad?” Mary flipped. “You got to have money to have credit!”
He played with his spoon idly. “You get the idea, sugar.” Then he swung up the cup and drained it and reached for the napkin.
“What are your rates for a cabin?” he said suddenly, all business.
Mary looked carefully at the expensive clothes and said timidly, “Seven dollars.” That’s two dollars more than we usually charge. The stranger didn’t argue, though.
“I may stay a few days,” he said. “Maybe three or four. Depends.”
Mary Ellen fished the register out from under the counter, opened it in front of him, and handed him a pen.
“What’s that for?” he said suspiciously.
“Why it’s the motel register!” Mary Ellen laughed. “Sign, please.”
“You sign it for me,” he snapped. He slid off his seat quickly.
Mary Ellen seemed confused. “Well... what’s your name?”
The man looked at the coffee cup and smiled. “Just call me ‘Coffee’,” he flipped. “Joe Coffee...”
Mary scribbled in the book. “And what is the nature of your business?” Mr. Coffee looked impatient.
“I’m a salesman. That’s close enough.”
“And your license number?” Mary went on.
“No license number this trip, baby.” Coffee wriggled into his topcoat and put his hat on carefully.
“How... how’d you get here then,” Mary asked innocently enough... “without a car?”
He looked annoyed. “I saddled up a sunbeam. That good enough?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Coffee. I have to ask you these questions. You see, when you operate a motel...”
“Spare me the higher education!” he cut in. “Just give me the key to the cabin.”
That was enough from this character. I came out from the back. “I have to insist on proper identification, son. That’s the law.”
The stranger stepped back as though I’d slapped him with a wet rag. “Look, Dad. I don’t have to stay in your shack, you know. There are plenty of cabins on the road!”
“That’s right!” I managed to keep my voice even. “But all of ’em will ask you for identification. It’s the law.”
He stood there trying to glare me down, but I stood my ground. His face was pulled down into a hard thin exclamation point and the fingers of the tan gloves he wore twitched nervously. I dug into my back pocket and grabbed the roll of pennies that I keep for situations just like this one. But this time I didn’t need my knuckle-dusters. Snake-eyes showed me his teeth and said, “O.K., Old Timer. I guess you play your game with your rules.” He pulled a fat wallet from his breast pocket, thumbed a bill, and threw it on the counter. It was a fifty.
“That take care of your rules. Dad?”
I looked at the bill for all of twenty seconds. Then I said, “Thank you, Mr. Coffee,” and handed him the key to number four.
Mary Ellen had been standing like a scared chick watching. When I picked up the fifty and shoved it into my pocket, she scooted around the counter and reached for Coffee’s valise, like a bright little bellhop. Coffee moved fast. He knocked her arm away from the handle. Mary Ellen stepped back bewildered. The stranger paused and shrugged. “It’s heavy. Much too heavy for a doll to carry!” Mary Ellen’s hurt look vanished and she was in control once again. The teen-age Theda Bara!
“Go on ahead and open the door,” the man ordered, handing her the key. Mary Ellen shot him that sidelong look and minced out. Coffee followed, limping a little with the weight of the bag.
I watched from the back room window: Mary bending against the March wind, her dark hair streaming like a pennant, and Coffee at her heels, holding his hat with his left hand and the bag with the right. Mary unlocked number four and swung it open. They seemed to be talking. Then Mary Ellen entered the shack and the man followed, slamming the door. I looked at my watch. Five o’clock. Mary Ellen shouldn’t have gone into the cabin with that character. I felt uneasy. But the fifty dollar bill in my pocket was like a tonic. I touched it and felt good right away!
A couple fellows from the pistonring factory came in and ordered pie and coffee. They were second-shift workers, sounding off about production cutbacks in Detroit. Jack Gilley... he’s a retired fireman... dropped in for coffee and started talking about a traffic slowdown on the highway. “Like a funeral,” he said. “Cars all spaced even... goin’ about thirty, thirty-five.”
“Probably a wreck up the line. Or a semi broke down,” I said.
Stan Clark, the bus driver, breezed in as he usually does after work, full of the day’s doings and stale jokes that he managed to make funny again. Stan’s a husky fellow with wavy blond hair, baby-blue eyes and a straight, honest look I always liked. He glanced automatically at the back room and I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Mary Ellen’s out back with a customer,” I said.
“A customer!” Jack Gilley piped up. “Well, whaddya know! Samboy finally hooked a flea-bag sucker!” The boys from the factory kept on eating, and I just ignored the old fathead.
Stan ordered the beef stew, and I heaped on an extra ladle of stock as I always do for Stan. And he always makes the same crack... “Best damn stew in Ohio!” This is Michigan, see?
“State cop told me there was a Cadillac abandoned up this side of Flat Rock today,” Stan said between spoonfuls. “Parked right on the asphalt near the white line. Right in the driving lane! Young kid from Wyandotte almost ran into it.”
“Who’d abandon a Cadillac?” I asked. “An idiot?”
“Gas tank was empty, Sam, and the keys were in the ignition.”
Jack Gilley chimed in again. “Sounds like somethin’ a woman would do. Run out of gas. Then leave the car and hike to a phone.”
“No,” Stan said. “The road cop told me the Caddy was stolen up in Detroit this morning.”
The factory hands stopped eating and sat listening, their elbows on the counter. Gilley was quiet for a change, also listening, his bald head cocked like a terrier’s. I fished some water glasses out of the hot rinse and clattered them on the drain board.
“Afternoon paper had a big write up on it,” Stan said.
“Didn’t get the paper yet, Stan. Boy’s late again.”
“Say, is that the car they used in the holdup today?” one of the mill hands cut in.
“What’s it all about, Stan?” I said. “I haven’t heard a thing about it. Was there a holdup in the city today?”
Stan tilted his chauffer’s cap back on his head and wiped his lips on a paper napkin. “Well, Sam, it seems like this here fellow walks into the office of a big wheel... Great Lakes Supermarket Building. He sticks up the bigshot and his secretary and walks off with the payroll. Something like twelve thousand dollars.”